Sidestepping the geopolitical issues with this for a moment ...
What advantage is there to using a high altitude balloon for surveillance? I have to imagine there are some - like longer loiter time over a specific point, maybe better optics because you are still in atmosphere, it's obviously cheaper than launching a satellite - but I don't really know enough about this kind of hardware to say.
Or maybe the point wasn't to actually look at anything, but instead see how the US would respond?
What advantage is there to using a high altitude balloon for surveillance? I have to imagine there are some - like longer loiter time over a specific point, maybe better optics because you are still in atmosphere, it's obviously cheaper than launching a satellite - but I don't really know enough about this kind of hardware to say.
Or maybe the point wasn't to actually look at anything, but instead see how the US would respond?