I got all my bloodthirsty shit outta my system in my 20s. Now I'm just treacherous and resourceful. 😎

BTW: The CCP are extremely fucking bad. They are the biggest threat to global security we face by a very large margin, and are a bigger threat to our national security than anything we faced during the Cold War.

You may have missed my previous (entire history of) posts.

I have zero tolerance for any adversary of the United States.

Xi, Putin, Kim and any other authoritarian regimes are the enemies of democracy and global security. Fuck every single one of them and all of their friends. I do not see a path to friendship with China, Russia, or DPRK at least until their current regimes are gone.

What I said was that the CIA has probably done some crazy shit with balloons. An example might be extracting operators using weather balloons and big hooks on planes.

I would not put them past doing some less productive shit with balloons as well. Omelettes often require a number of eggs to end up broken.

Cheers!

I bet the CIA has done plenty of weird shit with balloons. Those dudes are some out-of-the-box thinkers, for sure. 🤨

The fact that there might be a better way to collect certain types of information does not mean that less-effective and even riskier and more expensive methods of collection will not also be exploited, even if just to disrupt and cause havoc.

Also: Some data cannot easily be collected from the ground, and some communications/data stuff involving a balloon like this one could get pretty creative and go unnoticed by safeguards on land-based networks.

Ground Station to Balloon to Satellite Network to Chinese Government Balloon Enthusiast could be a scenario.

It could also be nothing to worry about.

Either way, I'm glad we have smart folks working on this.