We were discussing this at work last night and someone wondered if maybe this balloon was a test to see how passive the american public has become/how capable they are of taking matters into their own hands when the government refuses.

If the american citizenry finds a way to shoot that shit down, clearly they need to demoralize/disarm us even further. If we all just accept its up there and we can't do anything about it, then that's a green light for them to proceed with normalizing letting these things into our airspace.