* The balloons/objects are well known by intelligence agencies and generally tolerated for strategic reasons, but then one becomes visible to the naked eye by the general public, and the agencies must suddenly respond and pretend it's a brand new threat, because the news cycle operates on simplistic headlines. OR
* This is an entirely new and surprising development, and now intelligence agencies are aggressively scanning airspace for more of these objects and taking them down.
* These balloons/objects can't actually provide useful intelligence for China, but by sending them as sacrificial lambs and eliciting a military response, it sets the precedent for China to do the same for any US intrusion on their airspace. (This one could be combined with either of the above two)
* The timing of these balloons corresponds to other intelligence happenings that the general public doesn't know about - i.e., there is something happening in the intelligence space between the US and China, and these balloons signal some message that the intelligence agencies of the US understand, but which the public does not know about. But, again, the news cycle and the voting public demands a response to what they understand, and they do not accept "Trust us, we're handling it behind the scenes" as an answer. End result, you get an F-22 shooting down a balloon, in a highly visible operation. It's unclear if this demonstration was directed more at China or for the voting public.
One final note - we're talking about intelligence warfare between massively powerful nation states, which makes it tempting to theorize and hypothesis like I just did above. But possibly there is nothing much to think about, and the truth is exactly as it seems: China sent some balloons in a spy program of unknown scope, possibly to elicit this response or possibly not, and it became a political mishap for the current administration so it was forced to respond in a public display. And now the event has more implications for US political pundits and news cycles than it ever did for intelligence warfare between these two countries.
Which is correct?
* The balloons/objects are well known by intelligence agencies and generally tolerated for strategic reasons, but then one becomes visible to the naked eye by the general public, and the agencies must suddenly respond and pretend it's a brand new threat, because the news cycle operates on simplistic headlines. OR
* This is an entirely new and surprising development, and now intelligence agencies are aggressively scanning airspace for more of these objects and taking them down.
* These balloons/objects can't actually provide useful intelligence for China, but by sending them as sacrificial lambs and eliciting a military response, it sets the precedent for China to do the same for any US intrusion on their airspace. (This one could be combined with either of the above two)
* The timing of these balloons corresponds to other intelligence happenings that the general public doesn't know about - i.e., there is something happening in the intelligence space between the US and China, and these balloons signal some message that the intelligence agencies of the US understand, but which the public does not know about. But, again, the news cycle and the voting public demands a response to what they understand, and they do not accept "Trust us, we're handling it behind the scenes" as an answer. End result, you get an F-22 shooting down a balloon, in a highly visible operation. It's unclear if this demonstration was directed more at China or for the voting public.
One final note - we're talking about intelligence warfare between massively powerful nation states, which makes it tempting to theorize and hypothesis like I just did above. But possibly there is nothing much to think about, and the truth is exactly as it seems: China sent some balloons in a spy program of unknown scope, possibly to elicit this response or possibly not, and it became a political mishap for the current administration so it was forced to respond in a public display. And now the event has more implications for US political pundits and news cycles than it ever did for intelligence warfare between these two countries.