It's boundary-pushing.

They're unmanned and ambient, yet are clearly a provocation and give China an information advantage over where it would be without the balloons, and in a geopolitical sense it asserts Chinese ascendency. At the same time, it's hard for the US or other powers to figure out an appropriate response. Very similar to Russian/NK/Chinese/Israeli/American state-sponsored hacking groups--it continually forces the adversary to ask "where do we draw a line, and what consequences do we give for crossing it?"

Surely the appropriate response is to release some "weather" balloons from Taiwan.

I'm pretty sure they'd head towards the US too, but I'm not exactly sure of the prevailing winds.

You can check wind conditions with https://www.windy.com to find out …

I checked, looks like they'd probably fly into China right now (maybe Hong Kong) if released from Taiwan

It sounds similar in goals to the Regan-era PSYOP described by Peter Schweizer

> "It really got to them," recalls Dr. William Schneider, [former] undersecretary of state for military assistance and technology, who saw classified "after-action reports" that indicated U.S. flight activity. "They didn't know what it all meant. A squadron would fly straight at Soviet airspace, and other radars would light up and units would go on alert. Then at the last minute the squadron would peel off and return home."[1]

Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union

If I were Russia (which is not far from Alaska) I would launch these at random intervals with junk COTS electronics just to confuse matters. The cost of each launch can probably be denominated in thousands.

Damn that’s cheaper than 10 mobiks

Part of the provocation is that China has been seen testing balloons as a weapons delivery platform for high-speed gliding munitions

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23758/video-appears-to...

nah, SIGINT. great way to probe the air-defense capabilities of your opponent

> it continually forces the adversary to ask "where do we draw a line, and what consequences do we give for crossing it?"

Sounds a lot like parenting a toddler.

It could be to gradually increase reaction expectations so it would not be surprising if China shot down one of the USA's drones. Or perhaps escalate by using their previously demonstrated ability to blow up satellites. The balloon was a very public microaggression that forced the USA to respond in a very public way. China tried the public "oops it was a weather balloon" to give the USA a chance to back off the public response (but know that China was still provoking them). But it was too brazen to accept.

The USA is already on their doorsteps by having bases in almost all the neighboring countries, and conducting operational freedom exercises by flying and sailing through disputed areas.

few oil tankers which go to China attacked by unidentified drones will shut them up for very long time.

China is the only one disputing those areas because they decided to invent new landmass.

Probe detection & response times for various approaches and altitudes, sigint for radio chatter that doesn't reach past the US, similar for active radar targeting high altitudes, wasting more US money than they cost China by a long shot, trial-run for a mass launch of these with potentially more interesting payloads than these sacrificial trial ones are carrying (even just as a kind of attention- and resource-wasting chaff during, say, an attack on Taiwan), radio-signal mapping for some crazy new passive guidance system. Lots of possibilities.

> provocation

Quite possibly. Minor provocations that by themselves are too inconsequential to warrant a response, nothing to start a war over, but incrementally provokes the target into lashing out in some way that is advantageous for China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_salami_slicing_strateg...

(Other countries do it too, of course..)

Laser mapping of military POIs before a war in a few years? See the recent laser rays on Mauna Kea.

Can you elaborate on this? My understanding of the Mauna Kea lasers is that they are used to adjust the mirrors for atmospheric conditions in real time.

Yes, those originating from (around) the telescopes. But just recently Subaru telescope captured laser beams originating from space scanning Mauna Kea in regular intervals that looked like satellite mapping.

https://www.newsweek.com/mysterious-green-lasers-hawaii-chin...

I'm pretty sure nobody here knows.

Who is 'they'?

IMO, the balloons are an excuse to raise tensions with China.

Wouldn’t it be prudent in this situation for China to just not send these balloons over the US mainland if they didn’t want to offer the US an excuse to fear monger them?

America is forcing China to send balloons towards America so that America can raise tensions with China?

Unfortunately, tensions are already quite high in China, due to state media being the only source of propaganda. The state and most tv-watchers have therefore decided that America is the cause of all their problems.

It's not like this is new. We know there were 3 during the T administration. Now for some reason we've decided we need to be paranoid about them.

> Now for some reason we've decided we need to be paranoid about them.

That last one getting noticed by the public probably had something to do with it.

From what I have read these 3 were just recently 'discovered' and weren't known prior to Biden coming into office. How this can be true, I have no clue. Either way, I don't remember people posting balloon pictures a few years ago. I have a feeling that if they had transited during the previous administration, and people knew, they would have nailed this criticism to Trump too.

> How this can be true, I have no clue.

Careful re-analysis of old radar data, perhaps.

Its definitely not true. They absolutely knew these were up in the air the entire time.

It's a boogeyman, a harmless prop hyped up by the GOP in an effort to heighten tensions with China and criticize a tepid response by the administration.

The Biden White House seems happy to play along, justifying more equipment from top donors Raytheon and Boeing.

The balloon panic helpfully distracts from the massive freight derailment chemical disaster currently spewing vinyl chloride into the atmosphere over Ohio.