I swear it only became a news story when it flew over an area with people and it was low enough to be spotted. I could swear that I had read that the government already knew about multiple other weather balloons but just didn’t care or at least didn’t say anything about them. And once people start screaming there’s a spy balloon in the sky you can’t really just leave it alone.
That's quite literally what happened. It first entered US airspace over Alaska, then idly drifted over all of Alaska, all of Western Canada, then down through several US states before an "anonymous DoD official" decided to tell the media it was a spy balloon, and then everyone lost their fucking minds.
I swear it only became a news story when it flew over an area with people and it was low enough to be spotted. I could swear that I had read that the government already knew about multiple other weather balloons but just didn’t care or at least didn’t say anything about them. And once people start screaming there’s a spy balloon in the sky you can’t really just leave it alone.
That's quite literally what happened. It first entered US airspace over Alaska, then idly drifted over all of Alaska, all of Western Canada, then down through several US states before an "anonymous DoD official" decided to tell the media it was a spy balloon, and then everyone lost their fucking minds.