Obviously the incursion is unacceptable and should be dealt with but is it anything more than defense theater?
Correct. It's also newsworthy and because it's China, Natsec Twitter is full of loonies claiming it's an act of war, and promoting the story way beyond the attention it should be getting.
The last 20 years has shown us, whatever accumulates Clicks has the potential to fuck with the minds of the entire population and waste everyone's time and energy.
Therefore is it possible to trigger mass mental meltdown events? If you can elevate threat and get the whole chimp troupe excited with 1 Ballon, what can you achieve with 10 or 30? I hope the Chinese conduct that experiment.
Not shooting it down over the Aleutians, where almost no one lives, and then keeping it secret until it was over Montana: that's what made it theater.
Not theater would be: just shooting it down and saying "Routine air defense. Move along. Nothing to see here."