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99 red balloons go by | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo"
] |
>
Why can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ? | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by"
] |
>
Interesting article from Forbes.
Bringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.
Stratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.
The balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.
Previous attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.
Interception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?"
] |
>
We apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster."
] |
>
If aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet."
] |
>
You see “Nope?” | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed."
] |
>
That movie was insanely good | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”"
] |
>
It was ok | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good"
] |
>
It was bad. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok"
] |
>
China already playing victim.
You really can't make this up. "We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along" | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad."
] |
>
If this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\""
] |
>
so critical to national security and secrecy
Source?
I haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex."
] |
>
Look to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot... | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence."
] |
>
Are we sure it's not a "V" first contact like situation? | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot..."
] |
>
Aliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?"
] |
>
Don’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude"
] |
>
It’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know? | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available"
] |
>
Says the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?"
] |
>
Yes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit.
Thankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too"
] |
>
So anyways I started blastin | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km"
] |
>
Shoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin"
] |
>
Maybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road"
] |
>
Air Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it."
] |
>
Ya as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official."
] |
>
Panama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦 | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol"
] |
>
Annnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦"
] |
>
China always doing China shit | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive."
] |
>
I highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit"
] |
>
Seems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon.
Why would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah."
] |
>
It may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.
They may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering."
] |
>
Go touch some grass jesus christ | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark."
] |
>
in times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ"
] |
>
inflation in china must be worst then ours. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize"
] |
>
I'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with "SPY" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours."
] |
>
That's called: social media | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions."
] |
>
Are the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!! | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media"
] |
>
I love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!"
] |
>
Maybe the debris of a biological fall out...
the plot really thickens... | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles."
] |
>
Yup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”… | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens..."
] |
>
Just a thought..
A nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.?
Could a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?
Would there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected?
Just thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of "no one would ever dare to do that" or "that couldn't happen to us" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as "no way" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…"
] |
>
MAD still exists | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11."
] |
>
Mad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the "2nd" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists"
] |
>
Thankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.
I'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.
But the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful."
] |
>
I know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning."
] |
>
I think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing."
] |
>
i dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances."
] |
>
Lmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol"
] |
>
Might be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already"
] |
>
Yeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down."
] |
>
Did everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists? | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something"
] |
>
Google Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?"
] |
>
Why send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically?
It would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground."
] |
>
Reports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure."
] |
>
They don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own."
] |
>
China has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be
…
…
weather balloons? | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see."
] |
>
Are weather balloons maneuverable? | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?"
] |
>
$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.” | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?"
] |
>
We could have destroyed the balloon at any time. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”"
] |
>
I’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time."
] |
>
Probably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.
The balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM."
] |
>
What is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way."
] |
>
You are overeacting | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this."
] |
>
I know. That's how my anxiety works about war. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting"
] |
>
Don’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war."
] |
>
Get them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack! | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth."
] |
>
Would it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!"
] |
>
Need a naval blockade of China | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all."
] |
>
goes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China"
] |
>
The balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.
Google Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.
These accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.
The Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.
They’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps."
] |
>
They already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where."
] |
>
Yes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.
So, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.
Not depending on any other countries so called photos. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist."
] |
>
It is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos."
] |
>
Big brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack."
] |
>
Not clever so much as calm and reasonable.
I do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here.
It will turn out to be a big nothing. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort."
] |
>
Lmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing."
] |
>
Yeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays."
] |
>
I heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted."
] |
>
Oh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game."
] |
>
Oooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em"
] |
>
The Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂 | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio"
] |
>
Lmao do you seriously believe they released covid?
Also no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂"
] |
>
I do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things."
] |
>
I'm not naive. I just don't assume things.
If we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?
I'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive."
] |
>
Most likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours."
] |
>
From 60k feet? | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks."
] |
>
They bought one of those wifi boosters | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?"
] |
>
All that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters"
] |
>
Yes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please"
] |
>
All that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only."
] |
>
We do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.
Besides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down."
] |
>
Has litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens."
] |
>
Fraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me"
] |
>
Meanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny"
] |
>
China has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:
How are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?
Overall: Epic Fail | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media."
] |
>
It doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail"
] |
>
Come on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…
With this ask yourself, why leave it up there?
Personally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic."
] |
>
Condaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi."
] |
>
Maybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help?
(goes off to write screenplay). | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin."
] |
>
Will be interesting to see how Latin America responds. | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay)."
] |
>
I'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon | [
"“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds.",
">\n\nI'm actually interested to see how Latin America responds to their balloon and if it impacts how we respond to our balloon",
">\n\nSo, why a balloon instead of a drone?",
">\n\nDon’t they already have spy satellites? What’s the point of an obvious balloon?",
">\n\nGreat. We already have Russia trying to rush us to Armageddon... We need China to play as well???",
">\n\nJust shoot the first one down. Its over US airspace. To prevent people from getting hurt, ask people to stay indoors near the vicinity and time of the shooting.",
">\n\nWhy does the news keep using the term ‘spotted’ like some farmer looked up into the sky and discovered this thing??\n“The Chinese Balloon was spotted over North Carolina”. \nEverything that floats, flies or is launched is monitored in real-time by nations all over the world.",
">\n\nBalloon #1 is now gone, shot down after it was in the Atlantic, recovery is on the way by US team.",
">\n\nPerhaps America should send a balloon back to China, and 'drop off' the balloon they shot down.",
">\n\nWe need pyro balloons to counter this",
">\n\nIt's balooning out of control now...",
">\n\n\nThe Pentagon did not specify the balloon’s exact location, but a US official told CNN it did not appear to be currently heading towards the US.\n\nLatin America is within US sovereignty now, wow.",
">\n\nImma up the blinken on em",
">\n\nWhat if they have a nuke in them so if you try to shoot it down or capture it the thing blows. It just has to sit there collecting...",
">\n\nImagine if it’s a nuke designed to explode in the stratosphere and EMP the nuclear launch sites",
">\n\nEven ignoring the fact that we've known about EMPs for decades and built nuclear silos to be EMP-resistant, China would need literally dozens, if not hundreds, of these to go off at the same time to maybe knock out almost some of them. And even then, we still have our whole bomber arsenal and nuclear submarines to retaliate with. The idea of China using balloons to slowly and very obviously sneak nuclear weapons into our country is frankly too stupid to be true.",
">\n\n“Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes.”\nThe plot thickens.",
">\n\nBottom line is, we don't know what these ballons are doing, and China is lying. We don't know how many there are, or where. China has been encroaching on Taiwan, India militarily. Chinese ships have invaded fishing waters around the globe. China has mining contracts in Afghanistan and across Africa. \nI think the Chinese economic miracle has created a monster.",
">\n\nAm I missing something? \nCould be irony, but I wouldn't call the Chinese economy a miracle. I haven't seen anything in the last decade from Pooh Bear that would leave me to believe he's anything other than another Putin, flailing at western powers as their country's slowly collapse in on themselves. The balloons are a joke from a country that is becoming one.",
">\n\nFrom a country that had famines 70 years ago to a country thats just 1 generation behind Taiwan in chip manufacturing. You really dont see any changes?",
">\n\nNo homelessness and high speed rail makes me very frustrated at America's government/media. China does a LOT wrong, but let's not ignore how America has done nothing to improve the life of the average person in the last 20 years. We are headed toward serious problems if something doesnt change. Spending less on military to build public transit wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Rent control wouldn't be bending the knee to China. Universal healthcare wouldn't be bending the knee to china. Our media focusing on our issues at home with attention to the actual causes seems unlikely to ever happen when Tucker is the biggest show on television, and that has me worried about the next decade.",
">\n\nAfter having visited Japan just this last month... our country is letting us down in a variety of ways. Whatever is keeping your average American from rioting in the streets (seriously... there's a ton of reasons: healthcare, wages, treatment of citizens, police inaction unless they are shooting up innocent civilians, the list goes on) must be REAL good to keep everyone's ass on the couch.",
">\n\nI wonder this everyday lol. It has to be some kind of social conditioning. We live in a world so far detached from reality it’s like the entire country is a big TV show.",
">\n\nPersonally, I think it's due to our size (literally in both senses). This is a much larger discussion, but it makes no sense for our country to be THIS big. Our wants and needs are vastly different region to region and sometimes even state to state. \nThe only reason we're still locked in is because the rich states subsidize the poor ones.",
">\n\nAs long as food and drink are readily available its hard to unite behind a cause for mass rioting. I often wonder why we don't experience Shinzo Abe scenarios with a country full of guns combined with such a massive wealth disparity. Both parties have done an incredible job focusing on divisive issues which attract our attention. It helps when one party is legitimately insane.",
">\n\nThe attacks on politicians have already begun. One in NJ just died after being shot in her car.\nBut that's the R attacking the L.",
">\n\nIt’s just my Shein order",
">\n\nOhh that’s why it’s off track",
">\n\nPack it up boys and girls and everyone in between or outside the binary, reddit solved anotha one.",
">\n\nI could be skeptical of the first balloon only because the idea of air current - but for 2 to be located as a \"oopsie\" - no way Find a space to safely deflate.",
">\n\nThe first balloon was found to be steering itself. Balloons don't accidentally do that.",
">\n\n“We will get Aunt Peggy’s cookie recipe once and for all.”",
">\n\nIt's her Apple Brown Betty and the secret ingredient is horse manure.",
">\n\nMinh has a better recipe",
">\n\nAdd nutmeg!",
">\n\nfurious scribbling\nOkay, how bout this one? 🧁",
">\n\n\"Just monitoring the weather\"",
">\n\nThat’s no moon. That’s a space station.",
">\n\nThat's no balloon. That's a spy station.",
">\n\nThe local news coverage of these balloons is cracking me up. I feel like it's the national equivalent of half the small towns fire station trying to get a cat out of a tree. \nVery Pawnee Indiana\nThe news have no idea how mad they're supposed to be about a balloon floating above the 18 people who live in Montana, and the military seems to want to use this for fundraising so they can finally get those anti-weather balloon guns. \nSince this isn't going away today or anything, I can't imagine how the multi day 24-hour news cycle is going to try to get people to care. It will be interesting to learn what a balloon expert looks like and their thoughts on the matter.",
">\n\nOh no! What if it.... they put the satellite in space with the 10,000 other satellites Just like it? \nDrops the satellite for fun?\nI don't understand why this is so serious",
">\n\nSounds like the beginning of a horror movie where the balloon drops or reaches ground level one way or another and releases a massive virus or some shit",
">\n\nChapter 1 of a Zombie apocalypse novel.",
">\n\nThere s always two of them!",
">\n\nno more, no less",
">\n\nWe should send one back in the shape of a dragon",
">\n\nI'm sure they will bring it down intact when it's over the ocean. Need to see that shit.",
">\n\nIf they don't, then that's when we need to start criticizing.",
">\n\nIt'll all be OK guys. There monkeys being stolen from zoos, and I have a feeling they'll be equipped with darts",
">\n\nThe future is history",
">\n\nAtleast make an effort and give it some sky blue camo",
">\n\n99 red balloons go by",
">\n\nWhy can't they pop a hole in it, then let it fall slowly, then capture the equipment ?",
">\n\nInteresting article from Forbes.\n\nBringing down the balloon may be difficult as it is highly resistant to available weapons and is located in the stratosphere, far above the altitude of airliners.\nStratospheric balloons are very large, with NASA's standard balloons having a volume equivalent to over 195 Goodyear blimps.\nThe balloon envelope is thin and made of plastic material and it is unlikely that puncturing it would bring the balloon down.\nPrevious attempts to bring down large balloons have been unsuccessful. For example, in 1998 a rogue Canadian weather balloon was hit by more than 1,000 rounds of cannon fire and a volley of rockets, but it continued to drift.\nInterception aircraft may be able to hit the small gondola of the balloon, but a failed attempt would be a public relations disaster.",
">\n\nWe apparently haven't figured out how to fight giant balloons yet.",
">\n\nIf aliens come in giant balloons we are doomed.",
">\n\nYou see “Nope?”",
">\n\nThat movie was insanely good",
">\n\nIt was ok",
">\n\nIt was bad.",
">\n\nChina already playing victim.\nYou really can't make this up. \"We always respect international law and it's the US making us look like the baddies over a minor mistake of a civilian balloon that accidently hovers over key military sites and is accidently correcting itself when wind tries to push it along\"",
">\n\nIf this balloon is so critical to national security and secrecy, why isn't it taken down by now? Imagine whining about a floating balloon just so you can raise money for the military complex.",
">\n\n\nso critical to national security and secrecy\n\nSource?\nI haven't seen where this is critical to national security, the opposite actually that it's not a major security risk to US intelligence.",
">\n\nLook to see if Christopher Robin is hanging off it. Incase Xinnie the Pooh is looking for Honeypot...",
">\n\nAre we sure it's not a \"V\" first contact like situation?",
">\n\nAliens flying a battle bus? Maybe we're more akin to a batrle royale prelude",
">\n\nDon’t shoot ‘em down. Trap them shits and read the info available",
">\n\nIt’s about time the world sees what China is doing. Y’all are making a big deal out of the balloon while all your data is being given to the Chinese government by Chinese companies like tencent by law. They own a big part of Reddit you know?",
">\n\nSays the person typing on reddit who probably shops at Walmart too",
">\n\nYes 😭 It’s almost impossible to avoid it, which is the problem. I use Snapchat, Spotify for example and all of them have the same issue as reddit. \nThankfully I haven’t got a Walmart for hundreds of km",
">\n\nSo anyways I started blastin",
">\n\nShoot ‘em down. Let’s get this show on the road",
">\n\nMaybe I’m just not up to date on foreign affairs but what are they spying on? Farmers, cars driving on highways, people living day to day life? I don’t get it.",
">\n\nAir Force bases would be my guess. Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one location where they maintain the minuteman III ICBM’s (inter-continental ballistic missile), part of our nuclear deterrence strategy. But again, that’s me just assuming stuff, nothing official.",
">\n\nYa as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, it sounds like some BS world leader pissing contest lol",
">\n\nPanama Canal Authority gonna be upset they missed a transit fee.🇵🇦",
">\n\nAnnnd... Here's how we usher in WW3. Great time to be alive.",
">\n\nChina always doing China shit",
">\n\nI highly doubt that it's designed to spy on anyone. Almost all phones and electronic components are made in China, if they wanted to spy on anyone, they'd do it that way. We no longer live in the 50s, spying balloons make no sense. At best it's just some lost weather analysing equipment and at worst it's full of some new bioweapon that will erase humanity in a few years. But think about it, if they wanted to release a bioweapon into the world. There would be like a million better ways of doing it. So yeah.",
">\n\nSeems to me the simplest guess of its purpose is exactly what it’s achieving…pandemonium. It worked for Russia, who spent a helluva lot more on Republican politicians than China spent on a balloon. \nWhy would any adversary invest in any weapon against us other than simple internet fuel for crazy people? It’s the only thing necessary to keep this country in mortal hysteria and constant bickering.",
">\n\nIt may very well be Operation: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.\nThey may be testing how long Americans will stay complacent in the event of obvious foreign transgressions in a time of inept government. Right now, a heavily armed population is realizing how vulnerable they would be to a simple Trojan weather balloon. A population fractured by civil war that can't trust its militarized police. When you're a powder keg, all it takes is a spark.",
">\n\nGo touch some grass jesus christ",
">\n\nin times like these the most important thing for us to do is panic and catastrophize",
">\n\ninflation in china must be worst then ours.",
">\n\nI'm thoroughly entertained by the idea of open espionage. Just have a shady dude walking around with \"SPY\" on the back of his uniform jacket just walking up to people asking invasive questions.",
">\n\nThat's called: social media",
">\n\nAre the Feds watching the Coca Cola plants around the country?!?! Let’s not forget, people, these folks like to play jokes. If the taste of our beloved national beverage changes, we know who to blame!!!!!",
">\n\nI love how the US said they were afraid to shoot it down over Montana because the debris might hit civilians… Montana is about 95% open range with a ranch home about every twenty miles.",
">\n\nMaybe the debris of a biological fall out...\nthe plot really thickens...",
">\n\nYup… and I wondered if somehow they were trying to see the equivalent of “who picks up the package”…",
">\n\nJust a thought.. \nA nuke can weigh in at just a couple hundred pounds. What if a nuke was put onto one of these as it passed over a military installation, a major city, or D.C.? \nCould a nuke be disguised as something else such as surveillance equipment and then released over a target?\nWould there be enough time to take it out as it falls from 60,000 feet? Could this happen undetected? \nJust thinking. Just becuase it hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it couldn't happen for the first time today. The attitude of \"no one would ever dare to do that\" or \"that couldn't happen to us\" has been just the approach that has gotten us in trouble before. Disregarding or shrugging something off as \"no way\" has came back to bite us in events such as Pearl Harbor or cockpits of commercial airliners not being secure prior to 9/11.",
">\n\nMAD still exists",
">\n\nMad doesn't exist if they drop something 10 times or more the explosiveness as the \"2nd\" tsar bomba that was designed yet never detonated because there wasn't a way to save anyone dropping it. Instantly fuck up more than half the country and destroy all the main silos in one swoop. Anyway, yeah, I'm just saying, it's extremely doubtful.",
">\n\nThankfully that's not how nukes or US nuclear deterrence work, like, at all.\nI'm just going to ignore the super-giga-ultra nuke that wipes out all ICBM silos at once because it is physically impossible to exist.\nBut the entire purpose of the nuclear submarine fleet is to maintain MAD in the event that all land-based nukes are somehow magically wiped out instantly, because they can stay hidden and launch from anywhere without warning.",
">\n\nI know, but there's that kind of erie thing like, people were talking about that being bullshit when phone predictions were made such as having a computer in the pocket, is an absolutely giant technological new bomb so out of the realm of possibility? Or an advanced targeted bioweapon? Although not likely at all based on what we know, I still remain humble to such a thing.",
">\n\nI think they're getting data on weather patterns for aerosol releases of foreign substances.",
">\n\ni dont think weather patterns are exactly something thats difficult to come across lol",
">\n\nLmao, yeah pretty sure that is openly mapped already",
">\n\nMight be a plan to infect America like the Japanese had in WW2 when it is brought down.",
">\n\nYeah because its not like we have nuclear armed submarines with subsonic weapons stationed all around China or anything in case of a deadhand scenario or something",
">\n\nDid everyone freaking out about these balloons forget the Google Earth exists?",
">\n\nGoogle Earth doesn’t have ground penetrating radar that can see what’s hidden underground.",
">\n\nWhy send a balloon to do that? You have no control over it. Why send a device like that into a country who doesn’t trust you anyway with no real idea where it will go specifically? \nIt would be easier to activate a sleeper cell living here in the US to attach it under a car and go for an off-roading adventure.",
">\n\nReports are that they do have some control over it because it’s changed directions on its own.",
">\n\nThey don’t think twice about shooting us but a fucking balloon that’s up to no good and they want to wait and see.",
">\n\nChina has kick ass spy satellites. Has anyone considered that these things might be\n…\n…\nweather balloons?",
">\n\nAre weather balloons maneuverable?",
">\n\n$200B spent on the Reagan’s Star Wars program to develop fancy space lasers. Canceled. Forty-three years later and we can’t stop a simple balloon from entering our airspace.\nI don’t know about you guys, but I’m more sure now than ever that the US Government’s plan is to just “let them all die.”",
">\n\nWe could have destroyed the balloon at any time.",
">\n\nI’d like to hear your thoughts on how they would have accomplished this so easily. SAMs can cruise at that altitude, but the likelihood of them hitting a target at 60k feet is low due to the lack of control surfaces. F22s can’t fly that high. A U2 spy plane might stand a chance of reaching an altitude high enough to engage, but they don’t have any armaments. The US Army has 60 kW and 300 kW lasers that would work once it was over land, but then there’s the possibility of the debris crashing into someone’s house. The Navy has 30 kW lasers that are good to 5 miles, but the balloon is at 11.3 miles.\nDon’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of Reagan. The reason they cancelled the Star Wars project back in the 80s was due to an agreement with the USSR to not weaponize space… which is exactly what is happening now anyway. I’m quite certain the US Military detected this balloon when it was way out over the Pacific. Apparently, they didn’t have a viable option to take it down before it entered the US mainland, and now that it is here their hands are tied. Makes you wonder how effective they’d be in a real situation involving an ICBM.",
">\n\nProbably would have done it similar to how we just took it out - fighter and air-to-air missile.\nThe balloon entered the lower 48 from Canada, by the way.",
">\n\nWhat is inside of the balloons!? Hate to be conspiracy theorist, BUT is this a Trojan horse!? The balloon can be maneuvered. Do they want us to shoot it down and release toxic chemicals? This is concerning. I'm getting too old for this.",
">\n\nYou are overeacting",
">\n\nI know. That's how my anxiety works about war.",
">\n\nDon’t worry, it’s just Harry Kanes ball finally returning to earth.",
">\n\nGet them down to at least find out if this is a fuckung bio attack!",
">\n\nWould it be illegal to shine a laser pointer at it? I mean… it is an illegal balloon, after all.",
">\n\nNeed a naval blockade of China",
">\n\ngoes these stupid Chinese, just go to Google Maps.",
">\n\nThe balloons are up there taking the highest resolution photos of this planet.\nGoogle Earth, Google Maps, Apple Maps are all fairly low resolution maps.\nThese accessible maps have been, massaged, edited and manipulated for many, many reasons. Some for privacy, some for military protection and some for evidence of places and items they just don’t want us to know about or see.\nThe Chinese want to know and see it all and don’t bow down to rules of other countries privacy or laws.\nThey’re doing their thing and may be brave enough to show us what is really going on and where.",
">\n\nThey already have low orbit satellites of their own. The pictures already exist.",
">\n\nYes, thankyou, l realise this but the point l was trying to imply was that, we, the general public are not privy to the pictures. When Google maps came out, the pictures were much, much clearer. You could zoom in closer to things. People started finding stuff on these pictures, reported them on the net, then they would disappear from the map, blurred out, pixelated so you couldn’t see them anymore. The images we see are rough, the images that the powers that be, see are incredibly detailed.\nSo, in my opinion, the Chinese want their own images.\nNot depending on any other countries so called photos.",
">\n\nIt is beyond ridiculous and implausible to think any country capable of launching spy satellites is using balloons for spying in the 21st Century. Use your head for something more than a hat rack.",
">\n\nBig brain time. You probably think you made a clever retort.",
">\n\nNot clever so much as calm and reasonable.\nI do see that dissent from the mobthink earns a multitude of lost karma points here. \nIt will turn out to be a big nothing.",
">\n\nLmao basic common sense is mobthink nowadays.",
">\n\nYeah, it's a freakout of a mob. Otherwise my quite reasonable comment questioning how it is supposed to have been steered to various sensitive sites would not have been heavily downvoted.",
">\n\nI heard it was actually the soccer ball Harry Kane launched into orbit during the France game.",
">\n\nOh no, Blinken isn’t going, that will show em",
">\n\nOooh es un futbol, es una pelota al azar en el patio",
">\n\nThe Chinese are pretty trustworthy, they’re just observing weather patterns of the west any other thought would be sinophobic. Edit: downvotes mean truth on Reddit lmao, they also didn’t release the virus right?🙄🤣😂",
">\n\nLmao do you seriously believe they released covid? \nAlso no it's not xenophobic. It's just stupid to assume things.",
">\n\nI do believe that, the Chinese don’t care about anything. The United States said they didn’t release it and then retracted they’re statement, what does that mean to you? The WHO also said it needs much more investigating, stop being so naive.",
">\n\nI'm not naive. I just don't assume things.\nIf we're going the assuming route, why don't we assume that the USA knew exactly what they were doing by releasing and retracting that statement, thereby turning people by you against china?\nI'm not saying i believe this but that statement i just made has just as much to back it up as yours.",
">\n\nMost likey the ballon is a network server that deals with hacking local networks.",
">\n\nFrom 60k feet?",
">\n\nThey bought one of those wifi boosters",
">\n\nAll that fuss over a pretty balloon… people got nothing else better to do? Like, focus on the inflation and the recession please",
">\n\nYes we can all worry about one thing and one thing only.",
">\n\nAll that money spent on defence and they can't shoot it down.",
">\n\nWe do not generally make a habit of shooting at things in the sky above our nation. Things can fall.\nBesides, maybe it's just a regular balloon doing nothing interesting. Shit happens.",
">\n\nHas litterally solar panels and is the size of a small house. Ope just floating on by here dont mind me",
">\n\nFraid of the big bad bwoon??? It's ok hunny",
">\n\nMeanwhile a Chinese spy satellite can see your butthole. Has anyone actually stopped and thought about this lol. It’s a fuckin balloon. This isn’t the early Cold War. There is literally ZERO reason to use a balloon to spy in the modern age. Whole thing is being used for fearmongering by the media.",
">\n\nChina has admitted, it is unable to control its militarized balloons and I like that the US is not shooting the balloons down. This will further embarrass and pressure the Chinese for an answer to the following question:\nHow are we in the international community to believe that China is a good “international partner”, “superpower”, or military threat if it can’t control its militarized balloon?\nOverall: Epic Fail",
">\n\nIt doesn’t make China look weak. The majority of Americans think the government looks weak not shooting down this balloon. Seriously, go take a poll of people at the supermarket or work and see how many find this to be ridiculous. The USA looks pathetic.",
">\n\nCome on now, a balloon with cameras on it? This is early 1900s tech… NORAD has tracked the balloon since it left China. The US, undoubtably has the ability to shoot the balloon down and it’s not as though a slow moving balloon caught anyone by surprise…\nWith this ask yourself, why leave it up there? \nPersonally I think it’s intentional and continues the presidential offices narrative around China. It also presses China to publicly answer for an archaic spying attempt and provides Blinken a reason to skip out on meeting with Xi.",
">\n\nCondaleezza Rice would never have canceled this trip. She would have stood up to China just like she famously stood up to Putin.",
">\n\nMaybe they've been taken over by aliens, and this was the only way to ask for help? \n(goes off to write screenplay).",
">\n\nWill be interesting to see how Latin America responds."
] |
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