The neoconservative, US government-funded think tank CSIS is very anti-China, but even it admits:
"China has not used balloons for spying before... The most likely explanation is that this is an errant weather balloon that went astray"
https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinese-spy-balloons-skys-limit
@yogthos
In the 1970s I read a book about UFOs that said many unidentified objects were able to be identified as weather balloons by experts.
I also remember the guy who levitated his lawn chair into US airspace.
And this whole thing was a stunt to see if someone could normalize a conspiracy theory.