Greg Maxwell

From the Desk of G. Maxwell:

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed a critical diplomatic visit to Beijing this weekend following the revelation of a Chinese surveillance balloon, carrying equipment roughly the size of three buses, floating over Montana close to sensitive nuclear sites. The Biden administration says it is monitoring the balloon closely, has neutralized any intelligence threat it poses, and is considering how to bring it down, since there are concerns it could fall on inhabited areas.

High-altitude balloons might seem unimpressive compared with satellite imagery that can already pick out minute details from way up in the heavens. But balloons, as analyst William Kim pointed out last year, have several advantages over satellites. They