Everyone is talking about the “Chinese spy balloon” this week, for some reason. It’s apparently a big deal, it even has its own Wikipedia page already.
After days of back-and-forth, the US finally got tough with the dirigible and blew it out of the sky. Boom. Take that, China.
Now comes the post-balloon drama. Endless toing-and-froing over who gets the wreckage, whether Trump would have handled it better, what this means for Taiwan or Ukraine or Cuba.
Questions will persist.
Questions like “what was it for?”
“Was it really a weather balloon blown off course, as China claimed?”
“Was it a warning sign “testing Biden’s mettle”?”
And most importantly, “Who cares? It’s a fucking balloon.”
All that said, we thought you’d all be keen to hear the thoughts of our editors, which are as follows:
It’s probably not real. If it is real it’s probably not spying. if it is spying so what? So are dozens of satellites, your cell phone, your TV, and all the software on your computer.
This is the zenith of manufactured geopolitical drama. That this story is dominating headlines at all is absurd. It’s a nothing burger. A double-nothing burger with extra cheese, made-up sauce and a side serving of who-cares fries.
It couldn’t be more obviously a pointless distraction if it was a big floating sign saying “This is a pointless distraction”.
