This doesn’t make game theoretic sense. There is a ladder of escalation but nuclear surprise attacks are at the end. A single surprise nuclear strike makes little sense because it would preempt an immediate counterforce strike. In that case it makes more sense to just do a full counterforce strike yourself.
Let me be clear it doesn’t make sense for USA or PRC to use nuclear weapons at this time. There’s simply no need to escalate all the way.
What about North Korea? They might be crazy enough to do something like that, especially if they are pretty sure it could not be tracked back to them.
Actually, looking at current high altitude wind patterns [1] it looks like launching a high altitude balloon anywhere in a large chunk of the Northern Hemisphere will get it to the Northern US, including most of the Mideast, which includes many of the places with people that would love to do a terrorist attack on the US. If one of those places did it, though, their balloon would have to pass over Russia and/or China so probably wouldn't go undetected like a North Korea launch might. Russia and/or China might not be happy to be used that way.
A nuke isn’t plausible deniability. They, and the balloon, can be tracked back to source.
Someone in another post was worried about balloons dropping bombs. Guided glide bomb would be pretty effective. But the balloon isn’t stealth. As we’re seeing, even small objects can be tracked by radar. Also, bombs are heavy and that means a large balloon. Something the size of the ground visible spy balloon.
Infrastructure is more resilient than you think. I doubt there is a spot where a single bomb could cripple things. If there was, a ground bomb would be effective and easier.
The continuous monitoring today makes even underground tests attributable to certain counties. We can tell when the North Korean announcement of a nuclear test happened to not coincide with even vanishingly small amounts of radioxenon.
And, forensically, what’s left behind after an explosion tells the design and mix of fissile material, which tells you the level of resources available to the maker.
Not sure I believe that it can be done beyond a reasonable doubt. I still don't see what evidence there is that these things are Chinese. It's probably speculation and nothing more. It might still be true, but the attribution is likely highly speculative.
Balloons move with wind and can track the winds back to origin. I guess we can’t figure how far back the origin was but can make a guess.
Another thing is that other countries have radar. They likely tracked the balloon but ignored it. Russia probably won’t help but Japan might have seen it. Also, US is tracking balloons from before they enter Alaska.
We know the balloon is Chinese because they claimed. We don’t know what the other objects were.
Then it’ll be found and the consequences of having launched a nuclear weapon at the United States will be incurred for no gain whatsoever. That is to say, 0% chance. That would be unfathomably dumb.
After the first balloon, there was post about think tank worried about balloons carrying nuclear weapons that could produce EMP which would knock out electrical grid.
The problem with that scenario is that the US would respond as if nuke was used on the ground.
The balloon is just delivery mechanism for their fears. Could be equally worried about private jets.
Let me be clear it doesn’t make sense for USA or PRC to use nuclear weapons at this time. There’s simply no need to escalate all the way.