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U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

cnbc.com

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Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#431

Post by [deleted] »

indymike wrote: post #279
retrac wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming this is all due to America is, with apologies, typical American jingoism, that assumes the world revolves around Washington. Read some material from the Chinese side. The CPC sees itself in a life and death struggle with liberal capitalism as (allegedly) championed by the EU and USA. One or the other will triumph. The two orders are fundamentally incompatible. A new cold war is here, whether the Americans wa…

> The CPC sees itself in a life and death struggle with liberal capitalism as (allegedly) championed by the EU and USA. One or the other will triumph. The two orders are fundamentally incompatible. A new cold war is here, whether the Americans want it or not. I'm pretty sure the CPC has one enemy: losing control of China. That is the ultimate bogeyman, and when you view China (or Russia) from that point of view, you…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#432

Post by foverzar »

anon7725 wrote: post #8
metadat wrote: post #2

Narrator: "A job well done by the US Military" I'm glad we have sufficient technology and capability to shoot down a balloon. What happens next?

> What happens next? They retrieve the wreckage and analyze it. We hear nothing further.

Didn't they shoot it over the ocean? What's there to retrieve?

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#433

Post by lettergram »

SN76477 wrote: post #375
pard68 wrote: post #338

I have been in "no politics, no news" mode for over a month. I try to do this about once a year. I have yet to tell my wife I do it, but when I am on this limited media consumption she always comments how pleasant I am to be around. I think it is a good thing for all of us to do once in a while, until 80 years ago most news was at best three or four days old, go back 120 years and you're getting only last weeks top t…

I ignore the majority of it myself. Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics. I want to spend my energy on the things I can control and little energy on anything else. I'm much happier being completely unaware of whatever may be happening with the world.

> Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics.

I think quite the opposite — Geopolitics is impacted all the time by your actions. What you buy, what you say on forums like HN (where potentially tens of thousands read your comment), how you educate your kids, how many kids you have, how you influence co-workers.

The reality, is the world is smaller than you think. What’s the phrase, “everyone with 6 connections away from anyone else”. If you can have a major or even minor impact in your local region of the graph, it’ll expand outward.

I’m a cynical person by nature; but my cynicism comes from the lack of action / belief in action around me. You and everyone you know can really change the world in some way, if you push out your ideas and product(s) (like you are here btw, I’m not trying to claim you don’t)

That said, I always focus locally to build the community I want to see. It influences geopolitics, but that starts at the coffee shop, book store, school, home, etc.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#434

Post by sarchertech »

Merad wrote: post #361
zw123456 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is to shoot it down in a way it falls slowly so you can retrieve it and see what is in it, although, I suspect our intelligence agencies have a pretty good idea already. I have no idea of course, but one thing I thought would be a Stingray, at that altitude you could intercept thousands of cell calls. I doubt that's what it is but the other thing is if it has any radio jamming capabilities or other things o…

I’ve seen some unconfirmed claims that they show it with a missile whose warhead fuse was disabled. Normally anti-aircraft missiles are proximity fused and throw out lots of fragments when they explode, kind of like a giant shotgun blast. With the warhead disabled presumably it just punctured the balloon to deflate it and, as you say, hopefully let it come down intact.

F-22s have a 20mm cannon, and they can operate at 65k feet. I don't know why they would need a disarmed missile just to poke a hole in it.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#435

Post by LarryMullins »

404mm wrote: post #382

I feel like the balloon takedown was seriously mishandled. Imo it should have been shot down right after it crossed our borders and before it started move over populated areas. That way there would be no surveillance and you could examine the payload. Now that it’s in the water, you may not even find it.

The US Navy is apparently pretty good at finding missile debris on the ocean floor. Since they know where it hit the water, they can probably find it.

They might not even care that much, if they've seen this model of ballooncraft before.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#437

Post by ck2 »

moomoo11 wrote: post #395
404mm wrote: post #382

I feel like the balloon takedown was seriously mishandled. Imo it should have been shot down right after it crossed our borders and before it started move over populated areas. That way there would be no surveillance and you could examine the payload. Now that it’s in the water, you may not even find it.

Do you really believe the USAF and rest of the military and 3 letter agencies had not already intercepted/jammed/hacked the comms link? By letting it saunter all the way across they also probably got a lot of good info on its capabilities.

[flagged]

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#440

Post by 404mm »

moomoo11 wrote: post #395
404mm wrote: post #382

I feel like the balloon takedown was seriously mishandled. Imo it should have been shot down right after it crossed our borders and before it started move over populated areas. That way there would be no surveillance and you could examine the payload. Now that it’s in the water, you may not even find it.

Do you really believe the USAF and rest of the military and 3 letter agencies had not already intercepted/jammed/hacked the comms link? By letting it saunter all the way across they also probably got a lot of good info on its capabilities.

I don’t think they jammed it, considering how high it was. Intercepted .. I mean, China can use strong encryption too.
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