Thanks, Xi, for the balloon. It's ours now.

It's value is in our opportunity to learn stuff about Chinese technology and spy capabilities.

So we hear repeatedly that we can’t shoot down the Chinese spy balloon that has been violating U.S. air space for days.

If we did, the debris could crush civilians on the ground, we’re warned. The ballon’s spy equipment—equivalent in size and weight to two or three school buses—would fall over a 400-square-mile field.

Also, we’re told that the military took certain, yet undescribed, action to stymie the balloon’s spying capabilities. Further, it’s done all the time. Further, we do the same thing. Further, it’s no big deal.

But I think it is.

Apparently, just like the Biden has no interest in protecting our sovereignty on the southern border from illegal interlopers, he’s not disturbed about China violating our sovereignty in our skies.

China says it’s a weather balloon, ha ha, but the Pentagon says it’s a spy machine. It can be guided in one direction or another. So it hovered for a few days days over U.S. airfields and nuclear launch sites. Surely, because the weather over Montana is so interesting to researchers half the world away.

Would I be goofy to suggest that because Biden is keeping us in the dark the balloon’s mission might be more nefarious than just looking? I mean, with Covid-19 having originated in a Chinese lab, might they be interested in using a high-attitude balloon to seed infectious diseases?

Nah.

In any case, the balloon has illegally violated our airspace, so it should be shot down on just that principle. In the debris, investigators might well find evidence of China’s level of technological smarts. We might find out what it was spying on.

Further, because the balloon surely would be spotted hovering over America, China obviously wasn't trying to keep its presence secret. Was China testing our response—such as how quickly the balloon was spotted, how long it was followed and most crucially, how we responded.

The Biden administration’s reticence to do anything other than watch it diddle our airspace says volumes,

I don’t know if the U.S. military is capable of a bringing down the balloon while preserving enough technology to provide valuable information. If not, the balloon should be destroyed anyway, if not over land, then certainly over our territorial waters in the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf.

China might be bold enough to suggest that destroying its balloon was a hostile act or even an act of war, I sincerely hope that the Biden administration doesn’t apologize to Xi. Or deploy Hunter on Air Force One to beg the pardon of his Chinese pals

.