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Requiem for a Spy Balloon
Our skies were suddenly filled with spy balloons until they weren’t. Whatever happened?
In February, approximately 100,000 breaking news cycles ago, a major international incident shook U.S. foreign policy foundations already under tremendous pressure.
February’s incident — in which a Chinese spy balloon drifted ostentatiously above the continental United States for a few days — posed a very public challenge for the Biden Administration.
Republicans — and others — accused President Biden of taking much too long to act on the initial balloon. Afterward, a series of embarrassing missteps — in which other unidentified objects were shot down by U.S. forces over U.S. airspace — only served to compound the problem.
“The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research,” President Joe Biden admitted in a February 16, 2023, address.
“Biden says 3 unidentified objects shot down likely not spy balloons,” reported PBS.
“I want to be clear,” President Biden said. “We don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky. We’re now just seeing more of them, partially because…