Oh, My God, US is threaten by a white soft-baloons
Must fight back by a F22 and 11 Carrieres, all air-force go~!
Let's fly a balloon with cameras on it over any other country, maybe Russia or China would be a good choice, and see how non-threatened they are. I bet either one would go ballistic. The balloon itself isn't the issue, it's the payload.
The Soviet Union was not amused when they shot down the U2 spy plane in 1960, flying at 70,000 ft over the USSR.
The apparent cause of this overflight was exaggerated bragging from Khrushchev about the size of the Soviet missile fleet, and the CIA was looking for missiles that did not yet exist.
Unfortunate timing for diplomacy: a scheduled meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev days later was cancelled.
There have been reports that the current version U2 was involved in tracking the recent balloon, since it could fly over it at higher altitude, but the shootdown was an F22 fighter.