Well, this is interesting. The Pentagon announced today that a Chinese spy balloon has been hovering over the continental United States for several days.

The US is tracking a suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States, a senior defense official said on Thursday.

The Pentagon has been tracking the balloon for several days as it made its way over the northern United States, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said.

“We are confident that this high-altitude surveillance balloon belongs to the [People’s Republic of China],” the senior defense official said. “Instances of this activity have been observed over the past several years, including prior to this administration.”

“The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground,” Ryder said, adding that the US military decided against shooting the balloon down.

NBC News reports the balloon traveled over part of Canada and yesterday was seen over Montana. The Secretary of Defense held a meeting and presented options to President Biden but recommended he not bother shooting it down.

The high-altitude balloon was spotted over Billings, Montana, on Wednesday. It flew over the Aleutian Islands, through Canada, and into Montana. A senior defense official said the balloon is still over the U.S. but declined to say where it is now.

On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin convened a meeting of senior military and defense leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, NORTHCOM/NORAD Commander Gen. Glen VanHerck, and other combatant commanders…

The leaders reviewed the threat profile of the Chinese stratospheric balloon and possible response options, and ultimately decided not to recommend taking it out kinetically, because of the risk to safety and security of people on the ground from the possible debris field. Pentagon leaders presented the options to President Joe Biden on Wednesday…

“Currently we assess that this balloon has limited additive value from an intelligence collection perspective over and above what the PRC can do through other means,” the senior defense official said. “Nevertheless we are taking all necessary steps to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information.”

There’s really not a lot to see in Montana that would be of interest to a foreign government except for a few nuclear missile silos.

The defense official said the spy balloon was trying to fly over the Montana missile fields, but the U.S. has assessed that the balloon has “limited” value in terms of providing China intelligence it couldn’t already collect by other means, such through spy satellites.

The Pentagon decided China could probably see those missile silos better with its existing spy satellites than it can with the balloon. All of which raises an obvious question: Why bother sending it at all?

No one is offering a clear answer to that question. What NBC and others do point out is that this isn’t the first time China has sent balloons like this over the US. The difference this time is that they’re lingering a little longer than they have in the past.

This reminds me of how China sends military jets and bombers out toward Taiwan. The started fairly small and the over time they kept sending more and more aircraft. There approach seems to be about pushing the boundaries a little at a time.

On Tuesday, Taiwan scrambled fighter jets, put its navy on alert and activated missile systems in response to nearby operations by 34 Chinese military aircraft and nine warships that are part Beijing’s strategy to unsettle and intimidate the self-governing island democracy.

Twenty of those aircraft crossed the central line in the Taiwan Strait that has long been an unofficial buffer zone between the two sides, which separated during a civil war in 1949.

Similarly, if they’ve sent balloons before it fits the same approach that they might try to do it again but a little longer each time. The balloons aren’t really about gathering information so much as they are about testing boundaries or just making the point that China could be hovering over us at any moment. No doubt the next time this happens it will last even longer and maybe with two balloons at once.