But, but, but it's just a weather balloon!

Apparently this isn't the first time. That we the public know about. In the spy business, you don't reveal what you know. It allows you to continue monitor them. If you reveal, say when our spy agencies spotted the balloon, the next time they will do something different and you might not catch them.

I've no doubt, those in the spy business and charged with protecting our secrets, knew about this and took appropriate actions to not only protect our assets, but to make sure they didn't know we knew.

Once the public became aware, they needed to do something. So they waited until they could control the area where it would come down. That was the Atlantic off the coast. Now we get to see exactly what they were doing and the level of tech used.

We will be able to point at it and say, "Look, this is spy shit, not something that would be used for 'weather' monitoring." Next time one of these approaches our territory it will be toasted ASAP and there will be no ambiguity over whether or not it was some errant weather balloon.