Commentary
“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon,” or so the great writer A.A. Milne would have us believe. In Milne’s defense, this line was written long before China got into the balloon-making business. Unless you happen to live under a rock on a distant planet, you are no doubt familiar with the infamous Chinese balloon that was recently spotted traveling across a number of U.S. states, including Alaska and Montana, before being shot down in South Carolina. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was quick to criticize the rapid-fire response, insisting that the balloon was merely a weather device that had been blown off course. It’s now pretty clear that the balloon was not a weather device; it was a surveillance device. Although the balloon is gone, the threat from China still exists. In fact, the threat posed by the CCP has never been as potent as it is today.
