It was good to down the balloon in such shallow water. Safer — no people or infrastructure were harmed — and it made it much easier to recover the equipment on board intact so it can be studied by the US intelligence community. If the balloon was truly doing meteorological research, then the researchers involved would have notified the countries being passed over in advance, particularly if it went off course. But that wasn’t done — for this balloon or for previous balloons.
It was good to down the balloon in such shallow water. Safer — no people or infrastructure were harmed — and it made it much easier to recover the equipment on board intact so it can be studied by the US intelligence community. If the balloon was truly doing meteorological research, then the researchers involved would have notified the countries being passed over in advance, particularly if it went off course. But that wasn’t done — for this balloon or for previous balloons.