What Aren't We Being Told About This Chinese Balloon Story?.....

[global1]

Something to me seem very suspect about what we're hearing about this Chinese Balloon seen traversing the U.S.?

Blinken cancels his trip to China? Why? Seems overkill to cancel the trip over what the Chinese say is a weather balloon.

We won't shoot down the balloon over a very sparse populated State like Montana? They say it is for fear it could endanger or injure people on the ground. Yet they are willing to let it drift over more densely populated Eastern States.

Something just doesn't seem to add up to making any sense.

Are they using this balloon just as an excuse not to have to meet with the Chinese?

Besides the balloon - what's up???

[Irish_Dem]

1. Yes exactly, gives Blinken cover to cancel the meeting.

Blinken doesn't look like he was afraid of China's warning to not come.

China is surveilling the US and the US is surveilling China.
Trump even let the world know we have a nuclear sub next to China and NK
in the Yellow Sea.

[greatauntoftriplets]

2. There was a Pentagon briefing about it a few hours ago.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/02/politics/us-tracking-china-spy-balloon/index.html

[Midnight Writer]

3. If the balloon is sending info and is being remotely steered, it can be hacked.

We should be able to monitor any information it is sending, and we should be able to steer it to go (even land) where we want it to.

Or we could use it to send disinformation, or trace the signals to its source and identify where this operation is being controlled from.

[Disaffected]

10. How do you steer a balloon?

I assume the thing is not more than a simple balloon as it appears to have no set course either than drifting in the wind eg. a weather balloon.

[FakeNoose]

4. I believe this is a molehill

The Chinese have spy satellites in orbit, just like we do. They can already look down on us, just like we're looking down on them and Russia. This balloon is just to see if we notice it's up there. We did and we let them know. Case closed.

[BlackSkimmer]

7. Oh, we should just let it stay up there? Ride around, have a look-see?

It doesn't bother you that somehow this balloon made it into our airspace?

[FakeNoose]

8. I was thinking we could launch a few balloons of our own

We could tell them it's for Chinese New Year.

[BlackSkimmer]

18. That works for me.

[Bev54]

5. Blinken is expected to speak on it very shortly

[BlackSkimmer]

6. I agree with you.

Something very off about this story.

Or worse, we've got people asleep at the wheel at very high levels. (And no I'm not referring to the President).

[inthewind21]

9. Well

Clearly someone somewhere let the cat out of the bag our you wouldn't know about it to post about why you don't know about it.

[Chainfire]

11. It is an old trick!

https://www.history.com/news/attack-of-japans-killer-wwii-balloons-70-years-ago

[meadowlander]

12. Popped up during anthrax hysteria in 2001 as well.

What if the Chinese send over baskets full of anthrax?

[Poiuyt]

13. I heard that the Chinese are hoping we shoot it down so they can update

their info on how we track these things.

I'm very unknowledgeable, so take this with a grain of salt.

[Trueblue1968]

14. SHOOT DOWN BALLOON NOW. If the government won't do it ... i would & i don't know how to shoot a gun

but i would learn fast.

arm the Pigeons !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bigtree]

15. there's a Chinese ballon boy inside

...cut to nonstop coverage.

[librechik]

20. +1

[SWBTATTReg]

16. A rather odd way to gather intelligence, especially when more than likely, the Chinese do have

secret (and some not so secret) agents on the ground here in the U.S. And like so many here on DU have said, the Chinese do have satellites too.

Perhaps this is foretelling some significant problems w/ the Chinese space agencies, i.e., issues w/ putting rockets into space, the manufacturing of such rockets, as well as the intelligence equipment that stocks the rockets.

Another scenario is that this is a North Korean balloon (IMHO), and the Chinese are covering for North Korea. If so, then should there be some nefarious thing that the North Koreans are up to (dumping viral agents across the us, etc. (I kind of doubt this, the balloon doesn't seem to have such capabilities)), the Chinese will have an issue on their hands for not alerting the US of such a danger.

I am guessing that the most plausible reason is that indeed, this is a weather balloon. but I wonder why it is so far off course? Don't the weather in China come from the direction of the south Pacific?

[Xolodno]

17. Well there is this....

https://www.yahoo.com/news/secretary-state-antony-blinken-shouldn-174827979.html

And I agree with the premise of the article, particular when you have Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Secretary Antony Blinken. A quick look at her education shows she prepared to become a bureaucrat to fight in the Cold War, only problem was, once she got there, it was already over. So, manufacture a new one.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

19. If it turns around and lands in Roswell, NM ... we're all fucked

[leftstreet]

22. A month from now no one will remember this story

It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen

...although social media has been pretty hilarious

[Ohio Joe]

23. Yay!!! A new way to bash the Biden administration