Nobody’s gonna apologize or escalate this particular matter.
But the fact is Biden is making us look incredibly weak. There is only one plausible explanation for why we didn’t shoot down that balloon over Alaska or anytime before it left the Atlantic coast - that we were capturing the data they were relaying and breaking their codes - but nobody has made that assertion. In any case there is ample precedent going back to the U-2 spy craft Russia shot down in 1960. Eisenhower Admin said it was a “weather research craft” at the time, too. Whether Biden is compromised, or if it is just that the administration is incompetent, China will milk it. Even if we did crack their codes and capture their data the fact that it is non-public still allows China to taunt over the entire incident.
The real problem is Ukraine. Biden, and the Democrats at large (with some uniparty help) boxed us into a corner. We are waging a proxy war - not the first time - there is no reason why China can’t take the other side. Indeed they have plenty of reasons to seriously consider it because Biden has put us in a position we can’t easily get out of. Won’t cost China anything more than it costs us - just some money and munitions - but they drag us into deeper and longer conflict and, potentially, forcing us to quit just like they did in Vietnam. Hopefully we won’t be committing serious personnel deployment but that started out with ‘military advisors’ too. China has little to lose probing various responses to various scenarios.
RE: There is only one plausible explanation for why we didn’t shoot down that balloon over Alaska or anytime before it left the Atlantic coast - that we were capturing the data they were relaying and breaking their codes - but nobody has made that assertion.
I heard retired General Petraus being interviewed at WABC last week. He said that the signals from the Chinese spy balloon were being jammed as it flew over US airspace.