Chinese balloon

[silverscreenselect]

The Washington Post is reporting today that the balloon may have been intended to surveil Guam but that the Chinese lost control of it in unexpectedly high winds and it continued to drift. I read this on a secondary source and this is the only part of the Post article they quoted:

U.S. monitors watched as the balloon settled into a flight path that would appear to have taken it over the U.S. territory of Guam. But somewhere along that easterly route, the craft took an unexpected northern turn, according to several U.S. officials, who said that analysts are now examining the possibility that China didn’t intend to penetrate the American heartland with their airborne surveillance device.

The balloon floated over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands thousands of miles away from Guam, then drifted over Canada, where it encountered strong winds that appear to have pushed the balloon south into the continental United States, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence. A U.S. fighter jet shot the balloon down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, a week after it crossed over Alaska.

[jarnon]

That's an interesting theory. After their initial gross error, the Chinese made adjustments (like a good football team does at halftime) and managed to manoeuver the balloon over some strategic sites in the U.S. northwest.

[BackInTex]

Never thought someone would out do the USPS.

A few years back, when I lived in Houston, I got a letter addressed to an address in Kentucky. Nothing about the address aligned with mine, name, street number, street, city, state, zip, nada. The carrier just stuck a random piece of mail that was supposed to be deliverd 1,000 miles away into my mailbox.

[Bob Juch]

[jarnon]

We're aware that it had intelligence collection capabilities, but it was our -- and it has been our -- assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States. As we said at the time, we also took steps to mitigate the potential collection efforts.