In Daniel Elsberg's "The Doomsday Machine" he talked about the SIOP (Single Itegrated Operations Plan or something like that) which was devised so that there wouldn't be so many moving parts for the septics to deal with in their response to any "incident". Unfortunately the SIOP was basically nuclear bomb every major town and city in Russia AND China regardless of what the inciting event was.

So, if the balloon went up, their response was total destruction. But also, if some local commander went nuts and sent a few tanks towards a base, same response.

It's a good read but some of it is Doctor Strangelove level of insanity.