The Biden(‘s handlers) Administration has come into a lot of well-justified criticism over their handling of the Chinese spy-balloon issue. That has been beaten to death on any number of news and opinion sites, so I won’t assault that dead horse any more here, other than to say that it’s just another demonstration of incompetence from the Imperial Mansion.
But boy, howdy, has the speculation over these balloons gone crazy. Take a look (I’m breaking one of my own rules, here) at some of the comments sections on any story about this topic. You’ll see speculation as to the sources of these objects ranging from aliens to demons, and frankly, a lot of it crosses well into the nutball range.
Just for the record, here’s my take:
These objects are not aliens. They are not demons, nor are they angels. They are Chinese surveillance balloons, launched for what could be any number of reasons (including weather; knowing typical weather patterns over a potential target could be important in intelligence-gathering.) The Chinese are scoping us out for something, likely as not just poking us to see how we’ll respond.
And the response has been, frankly, crap.
No alien civilization advanced enough for interstellar flight would be likely to be interested in us. Why? What could we possibly offer? Earth’s resources? Earth has nothing that does not exist in vast quantities elsewhere, mostly in places where you don’t have to haul it up a gravity well. Contact with Earth’s inhabitants? Compared to a Kardashev 1 or 2 civilization capable of interstellar flight, we’d be of no more interest to them than ants are to us.
As for the other ideas: I’m not religious and don’t accept the existence of demons or angels, so that’s a non-starter with me – and if I did accept the mythology, I don’t quite see how a supernatural being of that type could be taken out with a human-made Sidewinder missile.
This kind of loony speculation distracts from the real issue: The Chinese are up to something, and we don’t know what it is, and the current administration is utterly and totally incompetent to deal with it in any meaningful way.
