If you didn’t know any better, you might have thought China was preparing to unleash a large-scale invasion on the continental United States.

News of a Chinese surveillance balloon loitering over the picturesque landscape of Montana generated a wave of sensationalist coverage and panicked responses from lawmakers. We don’t know much about the balloon other than what the Pentagon has told us: the device, which was orbiting miles above the earth, made its way through Alaska’s Aleutian Islands into Canada before flying somewhere over Montana and drifting across the continental United States.