just how close/far is this from “business as usual”? if this balloon were no big deal, i wouldn’t expect it to be escalated to the Commander in Chief. which tells me either (a) there’s (suspected to be) some real serious shit aboard that balloon or (b) Whitehouse is making a show of this for political reasons (e.g. to justify upcoming action against China, another surveillance bill, etc) or (c) top officials are clueless and don’t understand the signals they’re giving to the public here.

none of those explanations i find reassuring.

According to the front pages...New England had some cold weather today.

Smaller than the end of your pinkie at arm's length?

I gather that it gave the impression of being somewhat normal sized and much closer than it actually was, gauging by the number of people who thought they could shoot it down with their firearm.

Cancelling / postponing (whatever it will be) Blinken's visit to China does seem like a big deal.

> SIMON: This trip was supposed to happen this weekend, right?

> KELEMEN: Yeah. I mean, we were planning to fly out last night. We had our visas in hand and our bags sort of packed. So this was very last minute. Though Blinken had been raising concerns with the Chinese about this balloon since Wednesday, when pictures started appearing on social media of this thing way far up in the sky over Montana.

My interpretation is that this move was likely forced by the public furor.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/04/1154473950/u-s-cancels-blinke...

It's all political posturing. Look into the history of if you are allowed to take a photo with a handshake or not in political photographs. It's just part of the game to ensure you still have power or relevance,

The majority leadershio of the House are not “state apparatus”? Because they were the main source fanning a big deal out of it.

Their job isn't to respond to every current outrage in the media cycle. That's why we have a representative democracy and not a full direct democracy. They're to be held accountable for their overall performance every few years, and in the interim are supposed to be resilient to the short term ebbs and flows of public sentiment (which are fickle and can be manipulated) and do what's actually good for the people in the long run.

No, the state feeds the media what it wants to see reported. They can share what they want and they can hide what they want from the media.

> An F-22 Raptor fighter from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, fired one AIM-9X Sidewinder missile at the balloon.

How much did that balloon cost to make?

AIM-9X looks to be around $400k, F-22 is $85k per flight hour, so, probably not.

Basically free, when you consider they were going to fly planes and shoot missiles anyway for practice.

But why did this garner so much attention compared to the weather ballons that the US launches on a regular basis?

I'm not from the US but at this rate your country doesn't need any external enemies.

If this was a planned media push it would have been shot down before it entered the united states.