It's almost humorous watching the crowd that long ago lost their TV remote, that would allow them to change channels - lose their collective minds over this. I would bet that we knew about the balloon long before it even went past Shemya and made the determination then, that since it posed no real threat nor could provide anything that Chinese satellites aren't already providing, it would be better to try and figure out a way to hack into the info being sent back to Beijing. While there's probably a 'self-destruct' mechanism to ensure that a controlled descent wouldn't give info to us anyway, shooting it down would guarantee that there would be no chance of gaining any intelligence from it whatsoever.
The concern over a "debris-field" is obviously a poor explanation of why it wasn't destroyed, but hey...it was worth a shot (pun intended). LOL
Given how big a deal China has made ahead of time on the now-cancelled visit by us, it also wouldn't surprise me to learn that Jinping was unaware of the balloon and is pretty pizzed about it. Just the fact that they have admitted it is theirs, is a huge departure from their normal MO. Don't be surprised, if some high ranking Chinese official/general, soon goes missing from future public appearances.
So for all that think the "sky/balloon is falling," relax...it really isn't.
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