Interestingly, this story coincided with a story by Seymour Hersh that claims the US blew up Russia's Nord Stream gas pipeline. This whole balloon non-story owned the headlines for a good week, starting the day Hersh's story broke.

I'm guessing the latter. In fact there was a weird, leaked report that they were in US airspace during the last administration, which i think was meant to be supportive of Biden's response, but in fact reveals that US intelligence knew they were operating but didn't report it to the public - yet another reason why we don't need secret state security orgs.

Not surprisingly, in Australia, there's been no reports of any spy balloons ever. Even less surprising is that no reporter has ever asked a question about them - even with all the kerfuffle going on currently. That's all hush-hush stuff - not for the non-influencers to worry their heads about. With Aus Govt desperately arse-licking the CCP, there's no way on earth they would publicly shoot down a Chinese anything.