Don’t Look Up, Unless You Want to Be Distracted

The real story isn’t Chinese balloons or a UFO cover-up; it’s why we’re wasting taxpayer billions on colonizing space

Was it just a week ago that the shootdown of a couple of balloons floating over America sent the country into a tizzy over China and fed a fresh wave of speculation about UFOs? Before the moment drops down the memory hole, we should consider how weird and revealing it has been, both for what it shows about how easily Americans can get stampeded into an international confrontation over something inconsequential (in this case, with China) and more for what it shows about our unexamined assumptions about America’s standing not just on Earth, but in relation to space and the possibility that someone or something “out there” could be more powerful than us.

First, and quickly, the panic about China. In early January, the U.S. House voted overwhelmingly (365–65) to establish a “Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.” Not the competition with China, the country, but with the CCP. Then, just over a week ago, a resolution condemning the CCP’s use of a high-surveillance balloon over U.S. territory as a “brazen violation of United States sovereignty” went through the chamber like a dose of…