That Chinese Balloon Business

 This week, a piece or two of the 2023 Chinese balloon business (over the US) came out.

What the Pentagon came to admit?  Well....it was designed in a pretty simple way to connect to some US internet carrier on the ground....doing a data dump (I assume photos/imagery)....on a continual basis (meaning no satellite was necessary).

I pondered over this. 

Basically, it'd be like me turning to some 16-year old geeky kid and saying I want some imagery of a country....desiring to spend very little.  The kid would suggest some cheap connection deal.  He'd go down the list with Spectrum, Cox, Century Link, Horizon, and Xfinity.  He'd explain how crappy connectivity is with Xfinity, or how limited Horizon is in certain regions.  Then we'd go and sign up with the right carrier.

The engineer who designed this?  I would imagine he's been to a US college and knows some various ways to cut corners....doing thing cheaply.

The fact that you could have 500 of these balloons ready to go?  I would imagine there's a warehouse somewhere and probably just five or six guys running this whole operation.