During WW2 the Japanese had a balloon bomb project call Fu-Go. They launched little over 9000 of these balloons into the jet stream that crosses the Pacific for more that 6000 miles. Of the 9000 something like 300 made to the United States and Canada. They came across the Pacific and entered our air space over Washington state and Oregon. They continued across the country and at least 2 of them made it all the way to Mich. One landed in Oregon and was discovered by a family it went off and killed 6 members of the family. They were the only ones killed by the balloons and the only civilians killed in the continental United States during WW2 by Japan. The government kept it secret for fears that it would cause panic in the US. The project was suppose to start forest fires and destroy infrastructure but it was more about creating fear than anything else. Those balloons took the same paths as the current one today a lot of the them crossing the same areas as the one today. The only difference is today this balloon is crossing over land where more than 2/3's of our land based minuteman III's are located. From the looks of the array attached to this one it's eavesdropping on line of sight, microwave, cell, and other forms of communication that is normally not carried on satcoms. Once a balloon is captured in the jet steam it's not coming down unless it told to come down or it forced to come down. The military might want to be looking off the east coat of the US/Canada coast for any type of strange shipping that might be waiting out there to capture this thing when it crosses the coast headed out to sea.
Right now there are two things happening, (1) There is a group of analyst sitting in a room somewhere over in China watching every move we make writing reports and looking at data on how we handle this. Remember they don't plan 2 weeks down the road like we do they plan years into the future.
(2) Often the simplest things work the best while we are watching the world wide scope with all kinds of high tech they are sneaking in right on top of us with a balloon.
My 2 cents anyway