Of course. And you realize balloons can have an advantage over satellites in certain situations?

I’m just gonna be open minded about it and not jump to conclusions. I could see the US gov making it into a big deal for reasons and I could see it being a balloon to take pics of bases, etc on the ground. Both seem like logical outcomes. I mean it could be a weather balloon but I sorta doubt it based on what I know about weather balloons (I’m an amateur weather nerd). But I could be wrong! I’ll admit that. Gotta keep an open mind.

I don’t want a war with China, that would be awful. I’m just trying to be realistic about it. Seems silly to go through the trouble to make a surveillance craft like that and it not even have the capability to beam back any data.

Can’t say I believe that one bit. With how small transmitters can be these days, why wouldn’t it have one? Sounds to me like damage control. Not a whole lot of details in the article anyway.