Mastodawn

@atrupar I mean it's a weather balloon, come on already

@darwinwoodka @atrupar so you're saying the Defense Department's presser underway right now is wrong when they're describing the balloon's capabilities as a "surveillance balloon." Uh-huh.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Live-Events/#/?currentVideo=31053

Live Events

Live Events happening in the Defense Department.

U.S. Department of Defense

@femme_mal @atrupar well it surveys the weather at least. I'm a bit pissed at the defense dept. atm anyway since they had a surprise training exercise in my neighborhood last night and terrified the hell out of everyone.

@darwinwoodka @femme_mal @atrupar lmao. it's not a weather balloon.

Darwin Woodka

@chaos @femme_mal @atrupar wouldn't it be simpler for China to just use their spy satellites to spy on us if that's what they want to do?

@darwinwoodka @femme_mal @atrupar there are different sensors they can put ont his to get better info. They could also be using it to assess u.s. response or to send a message. Finally, the pentagon outright says it's not meterological: https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1621555805030940676

Dan Lamothe on Twitter

“. @PentagonPresSec says they know it is a surveillance balloon, not a weather balloon, as China claims. It is a violation of American airspace and international law, he says. It's current altitude is at 60,000 feet, he says.”

Twitter

@chaos @femme_mal @atrupar the pentagon thinks hosting training exercises in my neighborhood without even bothering to tell anyone is a great idea and terrified the hell out of us last night, so I really don't give a shit what the hell they say anymore.

@darwinwoodka @femme_mal @atrupar you trust china's statement over the pentagon's? And them hosting training exercises does not mean they are lying about the balloon; it just means they are inconsiderate.

@chaos @femme_mal @atrupar I don't see any reason China would bother using a balloon for any kind of military surveillance. They have satellites for that. Balloons are useful for tracking atmospheric conditions and things like that.

@darwinwoodka @femme_mal @atrupar Just because you don't see a reason and dismiss the reasons I posted previously, doesn't mean the pentagon is lying. Maybe they are intercepting communications, maybe they are loitering so they can see continuous ground movement, maybe they have Geiger counters.

Who knows except the pentagon and they would love to be able to tell us it was only a meteorological balloon rather than having to talk about it being a surveillance balloon.

@darwinwoodka @chaos @atrupar Yeah, no way at all the Chinese might want to check near-term growing conditions for grain which might be processed in a plant they own. Nope. Not at all.

@femme_mal @darwinwoodka @atrupar lol. that's not how you would checking growing conditions and even China doesn't say that's what it is. Also, those investments are being blocked.

@femme_mal @darwinwoodka @atrupar you would use something like this and launch it from the u.s. https://www.precisionhawk.com/agriculture/drones

Drones for Agriculture: Scouting, Mapping, and Plant Health Analytics

Farmers are using drones in agriculture to reduce the time and costs associated with crop scouting, field mapping, and aerial photography.

@chaos @darwinwoodka @atrupar What would you use to survey another potentially hostile country's growing conditions when you rely on knowing the cost of wheat futures to make a reasonable guess how much food there will be for a billion of your citizens and how much you can demand for arms trades if grain is the currency offered?

A balloon is a cheap approach and will do as much (little) damage as Google's Project Loon balloons have done.

@femme_mal You can use futures markets and available market and yield data for that. You do not need to surveille anything. also, the u.s. and Russia are huge agriculture powerhouses and would not be importing from China.

Also, you can't fly a balloon into the u.s. intentionally.

Additionally, it looks nothing like a weather balloon.

@chaos Okay, sure. You do that, buddy, tell the Chinese to trust western analysts.

And if you read the thread here I'm not the one arguing it looks like a weather balloon.

@femme_mal satellites can capture IR and growth conditions. The market is not withholding analyses and it's these analyses that price the future markets. They wouldn't gain any information that would be significantly different enough to shape their growing policies or arms negotiations.

There are plenty of commercially available sources for ag Intel. Or they could just hire an agriculture consultant here if they really wanted to go that route.

@chaos One could also extrapolate and say all that also applies to defense information, which gets us back to why a balloon at all when so much is already commercially available and published.

I go with monitoring where they're already spending money.

@femme_mal there's no futures market for defense Intel..it could also be sent to send a message. Or they want us to shoot it down.. If it were for agriculture they could just admit that.

I think agriculture is one of the least likely reasons and think provoking is near the top. Blinken even cancelled his meeting scheduled for next week.

@chaos They're not going to admit openly in public it was about ag any more than they're going to admit they've been sending spies to collect ag materials. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-seeds/in-iowa-corn-fields-chinese-nationals-seed-theft-exposes-vulnerability-idUSKCN0X80D6

In Iowa corn fields, Chinese national's seed theft exposes vulnerability

Tim Burrack, a northern Iowa farmer in his 44th growing season, has taken to keeping a wary eye out for unfamiliar vehicles around his 300 acres of genetically modified corn seeds.

Reuters

@femme_mal they do not need a balloon to gather ag Intel.. It's all available and more can be done if needed.

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/10/433

@femme_mal this is what they would use.

Large-Scale and High-Resolution Crop Mapping in China Using Sentinel-2 Satellite Imagery

Large-scale, high-resolution mapping of crop patterns is useful for the assessment of food security and agricultural sustainability but is still limited. This study attempted to establish remote sensing-based crop classification models for specific cropping systems using the decision trees method and monitored the distribution of the major crop species using Sentinel-2 satellites (10 m) in 2017. The results showed that the cropping areas of maize, rice, and soybean on the Northeast China Plain were approximately 12.1, 6.2, and 7.4 million ha, respectively. The cropping areas of winter wheat and summer maize on the North China Plain were 13.4 and 16.9 million ha, respectively. The cropping areas of wheat, rice, and rape on the middle-lower Yangtze River plain were 2.2, 6.4 and 1.3 million ha, respectively. Estimated images agreed well with field survey data (average overall accuracy = 94%) and the national agricultural census data (R2 = 0.78). This indicated the applicability of the Sentinel-2 satellite data for large-scale, high-resolution crop mapping in China. We intend to update the crop mapping datasets annually and hope to guide the adjustment and optimization of the national agricultural structure.

MDPI

@chaos @darwinwoodka @atrupar Read the article. You clearly didn't.