It the US while it fights a fake climate crisis
Anyone notice the contents of that Chinese balloon were never released? Why? Because it was barometers and thermometers and probably a wind speed sensor.
This whole spy instrumentation BS is utterly absurd. If they have put lasers on satellites, they can certainly put SigInt sensors or optical or anything else that actually would do spying, and would not want some huge balloon under them obscuring the view.
Imagine you’re in a briefing room and people are pitching ideas for spy missions. You have satellites ALREADY IN ORBIT asking for operations money. And you have some bozo with a balloon who says he wants to fly over the US and obscure all the in-orbit sensors while he does it.
Who in hell would fund that? No manager would undercut his primary intelligence for some bizarre thing.
THIS IS INSANITY.
The thing had propulsion? Hell yes. If you want to monitor the atmosphere over China you have propulsion to hold you in place so you don’t have to fund another and another and another.
That thing had a technical failure and created upheaval. It’s why the Weather minister was fired.