How do you *know* China turned nothing off? Do you have credible inside information?
It certainly passes my "sniff test" and it appears many others as well.
Like Eric above, I'm curious why you believe it's nonsense. Rather than a legitimate and very serious threat to the US, which it is. And apparently a threat to many other countries.
We have a $300+ million balloon program of our own.
This balloon nonsense pales in comparison to actual espionage from other countries, what I don’t understand is how this mole hill got turned into a mountain.
We’re all probing critical infrastructure, playing cyber games, inserting actual spies into each other’s countries, wiretapping heads of state, etc. Thats spy craft, and it’s always happening in the background.
Understanding the sheer scale of espionage that is engaged in at all times by all major countries, this pitiful balloon stuff has been blown way out of proportion which is why to my eye it’s just a really low effort propaganda operation that took on a life of its own.
Remember when Bloomberg reported that basically every major data center had secret Chinese chips? THAT would be something that would rise to an actual threat. But of course it was a lie, never retracted, so we moved on.
I’m not going to participate in the manufacturing of consent for our upcoming war with China. I’ve been watching this space since the Bush administration. America can’t deal with not being the global hegemon, and that’s all this is about at the end of the day.
You may disagree with me, find my views repugnant, think I’m anti-American, whatever. But these are my views based on my hobby of reading real investigative journalists and countless books of how the world of espionage and propaganda work and have been used in the past.
I’m not trolling, not being contrarian, these are my understanding of the world based on the information I consume. If PRSI was still a thing at MR you’d see I’ve always been interested in these topics and speaking uncomfortable truths to power.