We shot down four objects floating over U.S. airspace, but gave up looking for three. What were they exactly—and what is the government not telling us?
Sorry but I’m not buying that China is behind every balloon flying in our skies. Wasn’t there a US-based balloon society that claimed they believe one of their balloons was downed by the $400k missile? This article is a bit too speculative and hysterical for my tastes.
The total cost of the balloon was apparently less than $100. Its payload totaled 16.4 grams and consisted of paper-thin solar cells driving a computer board with GPS receiver and a transmitter which occasionally - subject to sufficient sunlight - transmitted its location to a global amateur network of tracking stations.
It has been argued (I forget where) that this balloon security flap, or at least the way it was extended after the big Chinese balloon was downed, was deliberate distraction by the US government to draw attention away from the much more serious matter of Seymour Hersch's story in which he reports an informant's revelations that the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage was the work of the US government, without congressional approval, in cahoots with the UK and Norway - and with Germany surely knowing all this, probably before the bombs were detonated.
It was later revealed that the US military tracked the big Chinese balloon from the time it was launched from Hainan Island, which is not surprising or undesirable: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/02/14/china-spy-balloon-path-tracking-weather/ . "With propellers and a rudder, it has the capability to be maneuvered." Yet this was not made known when the balloon first became such a prominent news item - I mean, distraction. Why then didn't they shoot it down before it passed over Alaska on 28th January?
"Retired U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, added: “In China, there is a very close nexus between commercial companies at every level and the People’s Liberation Army.”
No kidding, Admiral obvious. Now get a clue that China isn't like us and doesn't like us. Our entire establishment has been in the tank for China for years. We have a president whose son was in the pocket of these totalitarian gangsters and who likely benefitted from the cash and riches they showered on Hunter. China runs concentration camps. They created and spread the pandemic. And very few in our government raised a peep of objection. Why? Confucius Institutes, massive investments and business deals, hordes of Chinese students in our universities, and "professors" gobbling up research ideas. Plus spying on their citizens and ours and using tik tokk to surveille and influence our children. So, no, the balloons are not benign. Nothing the Chinese communist party mafia does is benign. It's long past time to stop pretending otherwise and to purge our government and civic life of those who do their bidding. Including the senile imbecile who sullies the Oval Office, along with his felonious family.
I do not trust our government and want our security state dismantled. The threat from these balloons is minuscule compared to the number of human assets (spies) the Chinese have infiltrated into our academic and corporate hierarchies.
Am I reading this wrong or is this article citing someone who worked for Clapper as a source? I do not have an opinion on the facts as they are forever gone, but citing anyone connected to this habitual liar is not the stuff that generates credibility.
How did we get to a point where absorbing every news piece feels like reading tea leaves? You really do have to run the citations through an analysis and bias scan to get a read on their connections. Then you have to do the same with the "evidence" and its presentation. Finally, encapsulate the gist of the article in directionality. So, trusting the military viewpoints used to be pretty straightforward, men of action cut through the bullsh!t and told it like they saw it; but now we have General Milley and Darth Vader Austin to destroy that credibility. Then we have the leaks and distortions and spin put out by the agencies and authorities to cloud what we know about the evidence with the sole takeaway being that what we see doesn't match what we hear. My "spidey-senses" came awake when the last opinion expressed was that the vital exercise remains unity, and that we stick to a meta-narrative; otherwise, the Chi-coms and Russkies will divide us and we will fall into their evil trap. Trust Jake Sullivan or Winkin, Blinkin and Nod to unify us and guide us through the current world tensions safely? Sorry.
No mention of fact that the first balloon was seen by civilians on the ground and reported to the media. Had the balloon not been seen, would the government still have shot it down?
I think this is the worst article I've ever seen in FP. First of all, the author essentially assumes - without evidence - that the other three balloons were Chinese spy balloons. That's possible, but it's not what we're being told, and there's no evidence it's true (and the author cites none). I don't know where these balloons came from and neither does the author. Then, after stealing that base and building a house of cards on it, he accuses the American public of hysteria. In fact, the response was hilarity, not hysteria. Both start with "h" but they do not mean the same thing.
This piece reads like he started with a conclusion and worked backward, rather than starting with the facts and evidence we have and working forward. Not what I subscribe to the FP for. I can get garbage like that from CNN.
The "hysteria" mentioned in the article was confined to the political class and media talking heads. Everybody else either yawned or laughed or wondered why now?
My gut has the government “calling off the search” for the three objects so when it does find them, it can stay silent. There is no expectation of more to the story.
China is a big problem. This is the very first time capitalism has been mixed in with Communism. All the other times, Communism failed because the despots didn’t have the capital to carry out their mission. China does and has patience. Xi is a monster. The human rights violations (Uyghurs and Tibet) alone should bar China from International governing organizations.
I think the Free Press has, sadly, been infiltrated by the US "intelligence" community, just like the mainstream "press"....
This article is amazing: the writer admits at the outset that we know nothing definite about the nature, purpose, OR ORIGIN of these 3 airborne objects -- but then immediately embarks on a baseless quest to convince us that they all must have been Chinese, and that their purpose was therefore obviously nefarious -- because, after all, China employs an evil strategy of "(using) confrontation to extract cooperation”.
Gee... that sounds like precisely the sort of thing that another "Great Power" nation has a long track record of doing to other sovereign states all over the globe... Who am I thinking of...?
Worst story I’ve read on the free press. This is the first story that sounds like it was written by government propagandists. Interviews with FORMER pilots who know all so much about the balloons, what we knew, why we did it, really? The simple answer can’t possibly be true. They blew the response to ballon 1 then overreacted on all the rest. This story sounds a lot like 51 former national security experts say…… (and if I ever hear former security experts say anything other than we have been wrong since 2001 I’m not believing them)
What worries me is that these guys panicked and needed a headline to show how tough they are and start shooting at things because they could. In Afghanistan they wiped out an innocent family after the airport bombing just for a headline. What happens if we do this with Russia or China ?
The Biden by the people for the people of the people government lies to us every day in every way.
A few kernels of doubt? Try a whole bowl popped.
Sorry but I’m not buying that China is behind every balloon flying in our skies. Wasn’t there a US-based balloon society that claimed they believe one of their balloons was downed by the $400k missile? This article is a bit too speculative and hysterical for my tastes.
The smaller unidentified flying object shot down by an F-22 armed with a sidewinder missile was almost certainly a small mylar balloon launched by that that august recreational institution, the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158048921/pico-balloon-k9yo and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11764757/White-House-admits-three-shot-UFOs-STAY-mystery-debris-never-recovered.html . A few days later, the military gave up the search for the remains of this due to the vast area to be searched being subject to snowfall.
The total cost of the balloon was apparently less than $100. Its payload totaled 16.4 grams and consisted of paper-thin solar cells driving a computer board with GPS receiver and a transmitter which occasionally - subject to sufficient sunlight - transmitted its location to a global amateur network of tracking stations.
It has been argued (I forget where) that this balloon security flap, or at least the way it was extended after the big Chinese balloon was downed, was deliberate distraction by the US government to draw attention away from the much more serious matter of Seymour Hersch's story in which he reports an informant's revelations that the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage was the work of the US government, without congressional approval, in cahoots with the UK and Norway - and with Germany surely knowing all this, probably before the bombs were detonated.
It was later revealed that the US military tracked the big Chinese balloon from the time it was launched from Hainan Island, which is not surprising or undesirable: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/02/14/china-spy-balloon-path-tracking-weather/ . "With propellers and a rudder, it has the capability to be maneuvered." Yet this was not made known when the balloon first became such a prominent news item - I mean, distraction. Why then didn't they shoot it down before it passed over Alaska on 28th January?
"Retired U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, added: “In China, there is a very close nexus between commercial companies at every level and the People’s Liberation Army.”
No kidding, Admiral obvious. Now get a clue that China isn't like us and doesn't like us. Our entire establishment has been in the tank for China for years. We have a president whose son was in the pocket of these totalitarian gangsters and who likely benefitted from the cash and riches they showered on Hunter. China runs concentration camps. They created and spread the pandemic. And very few in our government raised a peep of objection. Why? Confucius Institutes, massive investments and business deals, hordes of Chinese students in our universities, and "professors" gobbling up research ideas. Plus spying on their citizens and ours and using tik tokk to surveille and influence our children. So, no, the balloons are not benign. Nothing the Chinese communist party mafia does is benign. It's long past time to stop pretending otherwise and to purge our government and civic life of those who do their bidding. Including the senile imbecile who sullies the Oval Office, along with his felonious family.
I do not trust our government and want our security state dismantled. The threat from these balloons is minuscule compared to the number of human assets (spies) the Chinese have infiltrated into our academic and corporate hierarchies.
Am I reading this wrong or is this article citing someone who worked for Clapper as a source? I do not have an opinion on the facts as they are forever gone, but citing anyone connected to this habitual liar is not the stuff that generates credibility.
How did we get to a point where absorbing every news piece feels like reading tea leaves? You really do have to run the citations through an analysis and bias scan to get a read on their connections. Then you have to do the same with the "evidence" and its presentation. Finally, encapsulate the gist of the article in directionality. So, trusting the military viewpoints used to be pretty straightforward, men of action cut through the bullsh!t and told it like they saw it; but now we have General Milley and Darth Vader Austin to destroy that credibility. Then we have the leaks and distortions and spin put out by the agencies and authorities to cloud what we know about the evidence with the sole takeaway being that what we see doesn't match what we hear. My "spidey-senses" came awake when the last opinion expressed was that the vital exercise remains unity, and that we stick to a meta-narrative; otherwise, the Chi-coms and Russkies will divide us and we will fall into their evil trap. Trust Jake Sullivan or Winkin, Blinkin and Nod to unify us and guide us through the current world tensions safely? Sorry.
No mention of fact that the first balloon was seen by civilians on the ground and reported to the media. Had the balloon not been seen, would the government still have shot it down?
I think this is the worst article I've ever seen in FP. First of all, the author essentially assumes - without evidence - that the other three balloons were Chinese spy balloons. That's possible, but it's not what we're being told, and there's no evidence it's true (and the author cites none). I don't know where these balloons came from and neither does the author. Then, after stealing that base and building a house of cards on it, he accuses the American public of hysteria. In fact, the response was hilarity, not hysteria. Both start with "h" but they do not mean the same thing.
This piece reads like he started with a conclusion and worked backward, rather than starting with the facts and evidence we have and working forward. Not what I subscribe to the FP for. I can get garbage like that from CNN.
The "hysteria" mentioned in the article was confined to the political class and media talking heads. Everybody else either yawned or laughed or wondered why now?
Take that fucking hat off.
My gut has the government “calling off the search” for the three objects so when it does find them, it can stay silent. There is no expectation of more to the story.
China is a big problem. This is the very first time capitalism has been mixed in with Communism. All the other times, Communism failed because the despots didn’t have the capital to carry out their mission. China does and has patience. Xi is a monster. The human rights violations (Uyghurs and Tibet) alone should bar China from International governing organizations.
I think the Free Press has, sadly, been infiltrated by the US "intelligence" community, just like the mainstream "press"....
This article is amazing: the writer admits at the outset that we know nothing definite about the nature, purpose, OR ORIGIN of these 3 airborne objects -- but then immediately embarks on a baseless quest to convince us that they all must have been Chinese, and that their purpose was therefore obviously nefarious -- because, after all, China employs an evil strategy of "(using) confrontation to extract cooperation”.
Gee... that sounds like precisely the sort of thing that another "Great Power" nation has a long track record of doing to other sovereign states all over the globe... Who am I thinking of...?
Worst story I’ve read on the free press. This is the first story that sounds like it was written by government propagandists. Interviews with FORMER pilots who know all so much about the balloons, what we knew, why we did it, really? The simple answer can’t possibly be true. They blew the response to ballon 1 then overreacted on all the rest. This story sounds a lot like 51 former national security experts say…… (and if I ever hear former security experts say anything other than we have been wrong since 2001 I’m not believing them)
What worries me is that these guys panicked and needed a headline to show how tough they are and start shooting at things because they could. In Afghanistan they wiped out an innocent family after the airport bombing just for a headline. What happens if we do this with Russia or China ?
Not up the the standard I expect from The Free Press.
This balloon fiasco was all a ruse to divert the real story - the bombing of that pipeline. It's amazing no one is talking about this.