Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

971–980 of 1001 posts

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

#971

Post by zzzeek »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #443
zzzeek wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what they did to Tibet for example and they absolutely are an extreme ongoing threat to Taiwan

What did they do to Tibet? The CIA tried to establish an independent Tibet so the US could have bases there, and later engaged in “Free Tibet” rhetoric meaning US weapons in Tibet, and China went to great expense to build a railroad to Lhasa to keep American weapons out of Tibet. China doesn’t want US military bases on their side of the Himalayas. It remained an autonomous region until a bunch of clowns proposed putt…

so if China invaded Tibet (which they did) for "strategic reasons", somehow implying "they had no choice" and therefore "it's not really an invasion", then all of the invasions and interventions the US has done in Central / South America, Middle East etc. all fall under that same rationale. There's always a "reason"

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

#972

Post by dang »

unity1001 wrote: post #969
dang wrote: post #965

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar—especially not ideological or nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

But why is the parent comment not flagged and collapsed then?

I believe all the parent comments in this chain are flagged and collapsed.

Even if they weren't though, we need you to follow the rules whether others are following them are not, so pointing to what other people did isn't a good way to respond to moderation.

(Moderation is inevitably inconsistent, btw, because we don't see everything.)

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

#973

Post by dgfitz »

telmo wrote: post #864
vegasea wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is real football? I've heard of association football (shortened to soccer by the British), rugby football, Australian rules football, American football and Canadian football but I've never heard of real football.

And which one of those do you figure "real football" refers to? Can you take a wild guess? It's like saying "the real Albert Einstein", as opposed to good Albert Einstein the baker, who is a local celebrity because of his amazing Apfelstrudel. I guess it is confusing for Americans to find themselves as the cultural minority in some environment.

> I guess it is confusing for Americans to find themselves as the cultural minority in some environment.

Confusing, no. Amusing that this is the hill you’re dying on, fucking hilarious. You go on ahead and own that.

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

#974

Post by ant6n »

californical wrote: post #538
alanh wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, do we even need trig? Naively I would imagine that simple proportions would hold — e.g. same visible size @ twice the distance = object is twice as big

4x as big, since we see in two dimensions — you can judge length & height (but not depth). So if it appears the same size but twice as far away, the the length and height are each 2x. So that would make it the size of ~4 airplanes

Isn’t the object three-dimensional?

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

#975

Post by namrog84 »

Krssst wrote: post #912
torpfactory wrote: post #900

The big question is why China would send a balloon. My best guess is it carried electronic warfare sensors to try and collect specific information about US radar and missile capabilities. They may have in fact wanted us to shoot it down, ideally first painting it with advanced radar (both air and ground based) and then firing an advanced missile at it. Data could be streamed out until the moment of impact and used to…

Could just using aircraft guns be easier? I am probably completely wrong, just curious.

Among other reasons many fighter aircraft have max altitude of 50k to 55k and starts requiring more specialized equipment. And the balloon was at 60k feet. So perhaps they don't want to reveal which aircraft have capabilites beyond their advertised or something like that?

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

#976

Post by jasmer »

unity1001 wrote: post #901
jasmer wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US didn't get any of the Iraqi Oil. Ironically, it was Europe and China who benefitted in that regard. Also notably, the US 5th fleet defends freedom of navigation in the Gulf, which is mostly about Oil, and China is the #1 recipient of Oil! Funny, that.

> The US didn't get any of the Iraqi Oil This is the funniest escape from cognitive dissonance that is used in the US in this topic. The US did rob Iraqi oil: Forcing Iraq to continue selling its oil for dollars is directly monetizing Iraqi oil. Its worse than robbing it, because in a robbery you get the actual quantity. By forcing it to be traded for dollars, the US was able to print an unspecified and unquantifiabl…

That's some QAnon Economics right there.

The suggestion that the US benefits more on a dollar basis than a nation selling a commodity in that currency is very false.

Iraq is the primary beneficiary of it's Oil exports irrespective of the currency it uses, and those exports are protected by the US.

If the US did not enable open commerce in the region, there would be no Iraq. Or Saudi Arabia for that matter.

If collectively those nations want to switch currencies, they can absolutely do it, but it means they are on their own in terms of security and they don't want that.

The US does gain a bit of an advantage from seigneurage, but it actually has benefits for everyone else as well. It's no some existential thing.

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

#977

Post by jasmer »

unity1001 wrote: post #903
mardifoufs wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure those million dead people in iraq are glad the fifth fleet is protecting trade or that America didn't actually directly steal their oil. The same goes for the countless lives and futures ruined for the people still living with the consequences of the Gulf War. This is absurd and sounds exactly like a chinese nationalist rhetoric about what Mao did in the great leap forward. Hey, millions died, but think of h…

> protecting trade or that America didn't actually directly steal their oil "Protecting the trade of Iraqi oil in dollars to prevent them from moving to euro and other currencies" - thats 'protecting' alright. And apparently its ok if the theft is not 'direct'. Just printing dollars like a banana republic by forcing Iraq to sell their oil for dollars is ok. Of course its ok - its much better than actually robbing it…

Because 1 million people were not 'murdered' it's a fabrication on your part.

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

#978

Post by barbariangrunge »

SonicScrub wrote: post #667
neuralRiot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not in the defense industry neither know how the Chinese spy agency works but I guess there are more covert ways to spy than sending a 20ft ballon half way around the world.

20ft payload. Making this a very large system as far as high altitude balloons are concerned. The balloon is about the size of a football field

So that is how many desktop computers worth of processing power? Or how many cars worth of sensor equipment? What did they need so much space/weight carrying capacity for?

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

#979

Post by OJFord »

hutzlibu wrote: post #860
OJFord wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia frequently has military jets head for the UK, as I understand it just to test reaction time. (E.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/raf-ukraine-... as a search result, I haven't read) I assume this is something similar, just more to assess what the response is than how quick a known response is.

But to be fair, this sort of game is going on since the cold war in both directions.

Sure, I didn't mean to be 'unfair' or to make too much of it (it hits the news every time, as though it's at all likely it would've been a genuine threat) - just to offer another example of something I assume is similar in motive.

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

#980

Post by jjtheblunt »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #422
ozarker wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Had civilians not seen it the government would never have reported it.

Not even as a purposeful distraction from something more important?

this is interesting that it's downvoted, as in the day since multiple articles are showing up that the hype of this balloon is incongruous with the many ignored over the previous 4 years.
Post reply on HN