The China balloon.

Today is Rosa Parks birthday.

We’re flying back to Chicago this afternoon after a restful and warm couple of weeks on the beach on Anna Maria Island off the Gulf Coast of Sarasota.

On the flight I will be checking out the window looking for spy balloons.

Most commercial planes fly at about 35,000 feet. Spy balloons fly three times as high.

But the Chinese balloon that has made headlines this past week was spotted by a commercial airliner, so it was flying low.

The response to the Chinese balloon has been nearly comical except for the fact that any excuse for conflict between the U.S. and China can get dangerous.

The official Chinese explanation was that is was a weather balloon that had gone off course.

The official State Department reaction was that it was a spy balloon, although President Biden ordered that it not be shot down and so it continues to drift across the United States for the next few days.

Secretary of State Antony Blinker used the balloon as an excuse a cancel a trip, his first, to China.

The cancellation was clearly performance as he is expected to reschedule his trip soon.

A Chinese balloon over the U.S. is not exactly like the time the U.S. was flying U2 spy planes over the Soviet Union. That was at the height of the Cold War between the Soviets and the U.S. and the Russians put the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, on public trial before sending him home.

But the media hysteria resulting from the announcement of the Chinese balloon - it led the NBC Nightly News last night - does seem alarmingly familiar to those of us who went through the last Cold War and don’t want a new one with China.

“It’s hard to think how they could have thought that it wouldn’t have been detected. American airspace is so closely studied, by the US civil aviation authorities, by the US air force, the US space force, the weather networks – it’s extremely scrutinised airspace,” says John Blaxland, professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University and the author of the book, Revealing Secrets.

Countries sending spy satellites and high flying balloons over other countries is nothing new.

In spite of all the talk about violating sovereign air space, everybody does it.

And balloons seem to be commonly used although not as effective as satellites.

So why the big to-do about this one?

I’m not sure.

Maybe it was just a balloon that lost its way.