What’s been learned

Our air defense has been penetrated. The China spy balloon crossed the Aleutian Islands (Alaska), then flew over Canada, then over Malmstrom Air Force Base, observing its nuclear missile silos, then crossed over the complete continental U.S. and was finally shot down off the coast of Myrtle Beach, S.C., by an American F-22 fighter jet. What China apparently learned:

(1) It can penetrate our multibillion-dollar air defense system with a single spy balloon, a main breach of security protecting our country, rendering NORAD useless. (Who needs hypersonic missiles?)

(2) China now knows that we won’t act “too irrationally” for hours and even days to act on top-secret espionage.

(3) Spy balloons could in the near future easily contain 30 to 60 nuclear warheads to be deployed over the U.S. It would take only a few nuclear bombs across our continent to send out an EM pulse rendering our banks powerless to make transactions, paralyzing our trucking industry’s computer systems, and also rendering our cars and trucks and even our telephones useless.

(4) The spy balloon could carry poisonous chemicals or deadly biological weaponized viral agents to attack America with. Anthrax or smallpox or bubonic plague or a mutant strain of covid-19, which could be sprayed over the countryside or cities to kill or incapacitate our populations. What did America learn? Absolutely nothing. We have learned nothing from Pearl Harbor nor from the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, on New York City and the Pentagon.

TOM KNIGHT

Little Rock