The Chinese big balloon theory

I tracked the Chinese balloon story for several days, and floated away with some questions about what we were told.

Like U.S. reluctance to shoot down the balloon over Montana because of concerns about the safety of people on the ground.

Have you ever been to Montana?

What people on the ground?

Montana is the fourth largest state, after Alaska, Texas, and California. That is area.

As to population, it places 33rd, with 1.06 million, less than Philadelphia. To put this into perspective, Pennsylvania has 12.8 million people while Montana has 2.5 million cattle, twice as many cows as people.

Drive I-90 across the Big Sky state, and that’s what you see — Big Sky.

People? It’s an hour drive between towns, and that’s at 100 mph. There is no enforcement in cowboy country. (Actually, adjoining Wyoming is called the Cowboy State, but that’s all good.)

So when President Joe Biden and some general said they feared shooting down the spy balloon over populated areas for fear of hurting civilians, I ask what areas are that? Driving the northern plains, you can see from horizon to horizon without seeing human life.

The expected debris field would just be a small pasture in all the open space.

And before it got to Montana, it was over Alaska, which is vastly larger, and much less populated — 732,673, with 288,121 in Anchorage, its biggest city.

I can see why a shootdown over the Last Frontier might cause a problem in capturing the debris because Alaska is so mountainous.

Not true in Montana, and not true of much of the Midwest traversed by the balloon.

So what was Joe Biden thinking?

In corners of the internet, the conspiracy theories spin — the Chinese “own” the Bidens, father and son, and this would demonstrate it.

Or it would demonstrate the U.S. is a paper tiger that can’t defend  its own air space, in addition to its land borders. This would make for good Chinese propaganda.

Let’s face it — the balloon was designed to be detected. It was as obvious as Charo’s cleavage, no stealth technology at all. 

The Chinese knew it would be detected.

It wanted to see what we would do about it, even as it flew over our ICBM fields and various military installations.

That was the intelligence gained, not the measurements made from 60,000 feet.

The Chinese reaction to the splash of the balloon was entirely predictable — it was civilian and harmless, just like COVID, heh-heh, and we may take action against you if you defend yourself.

Just like Vladimir Putin.

The question is — will we blink if it happens again?