brockm on Nostr: Re: the balloon shoot-downs. I see a lot of people have decided this is a ...
Re: the balloon shoot-downs.
I see a lot of people have decided this is a nakedly-stupid wagging of the dog by the US that is worthy of mockery for the obvious stupidity of it. But I'm not so sure. If I was forced to guess, and I'm just guessing here, is China has produced a fleet of hard-to-detect signals intelligence balloons that may have been floating around for months, if not years, and what we are seeing is the consequence of the military figuring out what to look for and tracking them down. Likely by figuring out the signatures of their radio communications -- likely back to satellites.
I see a lot of people have decided this is a nakedly-stupid wagging of the dog by the US that is worthy of mockery for the obvious stupidity of it. But I'm not so sure. If I was forced to guess, and I'm just guessing here, is China has produced a fleet of hard-to-detect signals intelligence balloons that may have been floating around for months, if not years, and what we are seeing is the consequence of the military figuring out what to look for and tracking them down. Likely by figuring out the signatures of their radio communications -- likely back to satellites.