The Moon’s a Balloon

Continued from page 13

True, a Chinese-launched balloon, for whatever purpose, carrying a payload we now understand to be as large as three buses, should NOT have been flying through U.S. airspace without clearance. But other than surveillance and monitoring multiple telecom and broadcast frequencies or potentially looking into buildings at night with infrared technology, that burst balloon and the three other lesser unidentified flying objects subsequently taken down recently don’t terribly concern me.

Our next war will begin more like our 1990 attacks on Iraq. Take out their telecommunications infrastructure, and knock out power and water supplies as the Russians continue to focus their efforts in Ukraine. And though the potential of nuclear warfare still looms large as a potential world-ender, most of our enemies still seem to prefer global domination over the extinction of our species, I am a bit more concerned about all the data being gobbled, assembled, and prepared for use against us by foreign-owned/controlled media apps like TikTok.

And if/when otherworldly aliens decide on an invasion or have already landed on our planet, I think they will make their presence a bit more known and threatening than balloons gliding through mid-atmosphere, when they likely would have arrived here at something closer to the speed of light. It remains to me the height of U.S. hubris to believe that we are the only planet in the universe capable of hosting intelligent life.

In the words of Rod Serling, “Imagine if you will…” a U.S. without Wi-Fi and mobile phone networks in operation for a period of a month or more from the perspective of our digital-first Generation Z and Millennial population. Now THAT scares me.

Bill Crane owns the full-service communications firm CSI Crane. More information at www.CSICrane.com