If you thought the Chinese spy balloon saga would deflate as fast as the balloon did over the Atlantic Ocean, you’re sadly mistaken. Days after a U.S. F-22 destroyed the device with a single air-to-air missile at 58,000 feet, the story continues to hover over the news cycle like a blimp over Mile High Stadium. The only difference is we can’t use a fighter jet to bomb the conversation out of existence.
Take the emotion out of it, and the discovery of the spy balloon is a relatively mundane event. By the Pentagon’s own admission, this isn’t the first time Beijing has pulled something like this — and it’s not even the first time it has occurred over U.S. territory. Indeed, as members of Congress and pundits were running around with their hair on fire about the balloon blocking the sun, another one was spotted somewhere over Latin America. Such incursions aren’t ideal, of course, but they aren’t surprising either — and if U.S. defense officials can be taken at their word, they also aren’t very effective in scooping up information.
Nor is spying some new development in the world of statecraft. People have been spying on one another since the dawn of time; the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the British Empire, the Persian Empire, the Soviet Union, Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, they all have done it. Even friends conduct espionage on one another; in 2013, France’s former chief of domestic intelligence said Paris often practiced the dark arts against Washington.
