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Comment by zw123456 | Hacker News Reader

True, although from up there you can collect a lot more than on the ground of course. The US does the same thing over international waters off China.

The other concern would be if it has jamming capabilities, you can jam an earth station pretty easily from a balloon and effectively blind our satellites.

Even if there is wreckage, you can tell if there is offensive signal equipment like that.

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> The US does the same thing over international waters off China.

That's a good observation. Maybe the simplest explanation is China's "force majeure" claim was "true" and this was a wayward airship that was supposed to have transited the US west coast and Mexico or Latin America. Just like U.S. observational activities in international waters, just a little more invasive. Thus, when the military mentions they are tracking a similar balloon over Latin America-- what they mean is they know this balloon was intended to follow a different route too.

I suspect Hanlon's razor is operational here. China uses those things off in international waters all the time, the fact that this one almost perfectly followed the jet stream seems to indicate it may have had a malfunction of its propulsion system and it drifted with the wind. When the US uses them in the China sea they have the advantage that if there is a malfunction it usually would drift safely West away from China.

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