Balloons were launched in Hainan in southern China.

With US military bases in every corner of the world, it’s kind of hard not to fly over one

Now that you know that atmospheric conditions are chaotic, and that balloons have next to no steering capabilities, are you still convinced that China launched them so they can fly across the Pacific, through Canada, just so they fly visibly over precise sensitive locations in the US? Nobody is wasting money making spy balloons when satellites would’ve sufficed. It shouldn’t be hard to spot the military’s fear mongering.