Hacker News Reader

Arguments around force projection are certainly going to be popular inside the beltway. At a certain point the deficit does become a national security concern, and announcing to our adversaries that they can exacerbate that timeline with incredibly inexpensive balloons is no longer "projecting" anything that resembles "power"

Jingoism isn't power.

View on HN

My brother in Uncle Sam, we’re only one week into this “crisis”, which is widely overinflated. China is posturing about balloons in its own South China Sea, while America is gassed up about balloons over the Alaskan heartland. This is the posturing phase, and a missile or three is a rounding error in the US defense budget. I don’t see the economy losing buoyancy yet.

Nevermind that the training value of firing a live AIM-9X at a live but odd target is probably worth more than $400k on it's own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com