The United States and Canada has shot down three unidentified flying objects over North America in recent weeks, one (possibly more) being a Chinese “weather” balloon. For most of us, it’s just another blip in the endless news cycle. Another thing to notice and push into the far corners of our brain, never to be brought up again. So here’s to bringing it up again.

Imagine you walk into your own backyard and a weird object floats right up to you. As you’re inspecting it, your neighbor pops his head over the fence and tells you it’s his and “don’t worry about it.”  It’s just a weather monitoring device and would you be kind enough to just give it back? What if you found several others floating around the next time you enter your backyard? What if one of them just happened to have a camera attached pointed at your bedroom window? You can start seeing the bigger picture.

What if other neighbors decide to add their devices too, since you were so nice to just leave the first one unattended? What if devices started coming into your house the moment you open your door? You are literally opening the door for uninvited, unknown devices to simply waltz in.

The United States and Canada decided to take action and shoot the objects down. The reaction was “how dare you do that to an unidentified object that was doing who knows what on your land?” Say what now? As ludicrous as that sounds, you just got a glimpse of international politics and diplomacy.

So should you care? For the most part, probably not. This is just one of the many, many games that nations play to nudge and test one another. However, you should care that it doesn’t escalate. One day it’s balloons, the next day it’s planes, a week later it’s satellites, and so on. You should care, because the ultimate goal is complacency and ignorance.