The last time something filled with air got this much press, Tom Brady was suspended four games over it.
Since last week, the news cycle has been dominated by a balloon shot down by the Biden administration’s fighter jets off the coast of South Carolina, a balloon that was claimed by China and that Pentagon officials have said was sent floating over the U.S. with untoward intentions.
However, China continues to push back on those claims, calling the aircraft simply a civilian weather “airship” that drifted off its original course.
“It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes,” a Foreign Ministry representative said Saturday. “Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.”
“Some politicians and media in the U.S. have hyped it up to attack and smear China,” the representative alleged. “The Chinese side is firmly opposed to that.”
Once again, Pentagon officials countered. “This was intentional,” one senior official said, adding that the device was launched from mainland China.
More were certainly be known once the pieces from the balloon’s wreckage are recovered and analyzed by American researchers.
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