This world. If you read the article, it is noted that this is a common occurrence:

> “Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years,” Ryder said

Seems more like someone wanted to stir up some feelings.

common != it has happened before.

also note in the DOD press briefing they stated that this was markedly different than previous incursions due to primarily the duration of loitering.

also what are these comments..? openly lauding an adversarial state which is conducting flagrant surveillance operations in the continental united states? yikes.

Not everybody here on HN is from US. Not everybody automatically likes that US can do whatever they want, wherever they want and its fine because dubious reasons at best, but as soon as anybody else does same its outrage, terrorists and other blahs that look frankly laughable to most folks outside US. TBH its mostly the opposite, world is fed up with that for past 20 years since it brought just tons of evil, death and fucked up whole regions for generations to come. Even most democratic and US aligned countries are fed up with that. Don't forget more than 95% of mankind doesn't live in US.

This is definitely one of those situations. If US can fly spy planes over say Russia or China, why shouldn't they be allowed the same? If you shoot their stuff, they can shoot yours. Fair game I say (not dragging current russian war in ukraine into this, to which I am strong opponent and even donated my own drone to AFU when it started).

The world that doesn’t know history until the end of ww2 would be mad that the world has never been more peaceful to more people.

False extrapolation. No one is "lauding an adversarial state".

And adversarial to whom? The west is as adversarial to China as China is to the west.

You sound put off that the comments don't have enough patriotism. Lacking blind patriotism would in fact be called "neutral".

> common != it has happened before

It would be atypical to say "over the past several years" about a unique occurrence.

In a world where we have constant satellite coverage of the entire planet doing basically what we think this balloon might be doing.

And China has many satellites that are not in the news, but violating sovereign airspace Matters regardless of whether or not it materially matters.

Violating sovereign airspace matters to the US only when it's done to the US. Because to the US, the US is the only sovereign country in the world. All the others can and should get routinely violated by US planes, if you believe US media. So yeah, get out of here.

This is US news, in a U.S. newspaper, on a US site, in English.

I think sometimes people complain that something isn’t news it’s just US news, while they’re on US channels populated or run by US folks. And you know, what do you expect?

That's not their point. The US routinely violates various nation's airspace. Hell, what do you think the odds are the US is currently violating Chinese airspace in some capacity? Depending on who's definition of Chinese airspace you use, it's pretty damn likely.

How does the statement "The US violates routinely sovereign airspace" make the point that "China violating US airspace" is not newsworthy? If China routinely violated sovereign (US) airspace it wouldn't be newsworthy!

> but violating sovereign airspace Matters regardless of whether or not it materially matters.

So it always matters, but it's frequency determines whether it's newsworthy? I don't understand that position.