Eventually I had to conclude that, among other things, a lot of folks are unconsciously concerned about the magic of the experience being taken away. (But maybe they don't realize it unless someone brings up that specific question, and until then they are pretty fiercely protective about what they saw.)
And one time I myself was out for a walk in the middle of the day, and saw what appeared to be a totally legit UFO in the distance. Well that's pretty wild, I thought. A real shape-shifter! A nearby contractor shouted, "am I the only one seeing this sh*t" and I was like "nope" and got out my 25x zoom camera to gather direct evidence!
Result: At high zoom it was obviously wedding-style white balloons in a bundle, resembling a morphing UFO.
I told the other guy what it was, and BOOM the magic in the air was gone. He looked SO disappointed, and I had to admit I felt that way too. By the time I got home I had half convinced myself never to do that again!
While I still leave room for there to be UAPs from wherever, IMO there are just tons and tons of different experiences with so many different phenomena. And most discussions are unfortunately going to hover around this real-vs-made-up dichotomy that's also just super unhelpful.
Valid take you've got, I think.
What were some of these questions?
Even the largest successful government coverups (MKULTRA, Iran-Contra, etc.) required far fewer people to be "in the know" than would be required for something like a crashed or observed alien spacecraft. In addition to this, the people who would have to be in the know would not be a community of high-ranking intelligence officers who are dedicated to their mission. It would be janitors, construction workers, commercial radar operators, and the like. There is no way that people like this could be motivated to keep an existential threat like this under wraps.
Person who already believes in aliens and flying saucers finds stories of aliens and flying saucers credible. Film at 11.
Show me some evidence. Show me wreckage. Show me autopsies and photos of alien bodies. Something that can't be walked back from. You say we've reverse engineered alien tech? Publish the research. Tell us how anti-gravity and warp drives work. Give us the science and a replicable model. I don't care that Marco Rubio heard a thing from a guy, I want the smoking gun.
But I think more than that it's important to be aware that many contractors and govts. conduct tests that aren't public or even inter-agency knowledge. Projects are need to know, even for people with the highest clearances.
I want to believe, but not like this.
In the discussions following those papers, one comment stuck with me, though I forget where I read it. It goes like this:
“Coverage of these papers often has titles like ‘Rigorous Scientific Studies Prove Psi is Real’, but I would instead say ‘Psi Proves Rigorous Scientific Studies are False’”
This comes to mind with this UFO stuff because I find myself having a similar reaction. We are being presented with the highest quality of what we might call “media evidence”: reputable and named sources from real and major organizations, on the record, quotes that stand alone (no need to editorialize and distort what they’re saying etc), the whole nine yards. They are scrupulously doing everything right, you could not possibly demand a higher standard of reporting - and yet the contention is antithetical to reality. UFO reporting is basically convincing me that even unbiased honest reporting free from any agenda can’t be relied upon.
(Am I refusing to entertain the possibility that UFOs are real only because I know that if I did entertain the possibility, the evidence would be overwhelming, and that would result in me being forced to believe in UFOs, which I don’t want to do? Not quite. I am partial to Steve Sailer’s ‘Shoebill’ argument: “there is a giant bird that looks like a dinosaur and sounds like a machine gun” is a wild claim I would refuse to believe, but there are now countless hours of high quality video footage of such things existing; where is the good video evidence for UFOs?)
Is UFO credence starting to split along party lines?
1: https://www.newsweek.com/josh-hawley-ufo-whistleblower-repor...
2: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/marco-rubio-christop...
> “We need to just look into whether there are rogue SAP programs that no one is providing oversight for,” says Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who led the Senate’s April UAP hearing. “The goal for me will be to have a hearing on that at some point so that we can assess if these SAP’s actually exist.”
This has quite a different thrust to the statements of Hawley and Rubio, IMO.
1: https://www.wired.com/story/ufo-whistleblower-us-congress-in...
Given the staggering, likely impossible task of traveling between the stars, it's essentially impossible that they'd turn up on a planet with this many people and be so in tune with our technology and media that they manage to stay out of sight entirely, except for some government secret Area 53 base or whatever.
If you think that traveling between the stars is even remotely practical then maybe watch this video that illustrates the distance only to the closest star, let alone any further away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...
They could have have arrived in the solar system 100 million years ago, just running maintenance routines and sending observations back home ever since. They don't need to know anything about human culture to stay largely unobserved, any more than human bird watchers need to know bird culture.
I don't think that this is particularly likely but known physics permits alien visitors if you assume that they are stealthy (not acquisitive) and very patient.
Right now it's riding the wave of virality from the Chinese balloon/UAP stuff from earlier this year and last year.
David Grusch, A former NGA intelligence officer has recently come forward with allegations that there are waived, unacknowledged Special Access Programs that are reverse engineering non-human technology, and that these programs have not had proper congressional oversight.
Why should we give him the time of day? Well, he was one of the highest intelligence officials in our nation. He was read in to over 2000 special access programs, and he gave Biden the presidential daily briefing for the NGA on a daily basis. He's given 11 hours of testimony under oath to the congressional intelligence committees; giving program names, locations, and people working on those "rogue" programs.
These allegations are incredibly serious. There are only two outcomes from here: either he is lying and this is some big government psy-op, or he is telling the truth. Either way, congress should investigate and get to the bottom of this.
Marco Rubio amplifying Grusch's allegations by confirming that other whistleblowers who have first hand knowledge of the programs have also testified to the fact.
Here is the article that broke the story: https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-re...
Here is the interview he did with Ross Coulthart: https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/we-are-not-alone-the...
"At the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Grusch served as a Senior Intelligence Capabilities Integration Officer, cleared at the Top Secret/Secret Compartmented Information level, and was the agency’s Senior Technical Advisor for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena analysis/Trans-Medium Issues. From 2016 to 2021, he served with the National Reconnaissance Office as Senior Intelligence Officer and led the production of the NRO director’s daily briefing. Grusch was a GS-15 civilian, the military equivalent of a Colonel."
He was not even close to "one of the highest intelligence officials in our nation". He was almost certainly not "read into over 2000 special access programs" and there's no credible claim that he ever briefed the President, let alone did it daily. He was a mid-level analyst who specialized in UAPs. He testified to Congress about what he heard and what he believes, and both of those could very easily be wrong without there being a "big government psy-op".
> "a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material" possessed and to make it available to the AARO director for "assessment, analysis, and inspection."
source: https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/senate-intelligence-bill-giv...
Why are “David is having a very public mental health crisis.” or “David was mistaken about those programs.” not possibilities?
> Rubio told NewsNation that there are others in the intelligence community who have come forward with “firsthand” accounts of UFO hardware. Rubio, a longtime advocate for transparency on the alien issue, claims there are several more intelligence whistleblowers with “high clearances” who have shared similar allegations with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
> The new UAP language (found in Section 1104 of the bill) would require "any person currently or formerly under contract with the Federal Government that has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the Federal Government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena that formerly or currently is protected by any form of special access or restricted access" to notify the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) within 60 days of enactment, and to provide within 180 days (six months) "a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material" possessed and to make it available to the AARO director for "assessment, analysis, and inspection."
source: https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/senate-intelligence-bill-giv...
Why would the senate intel committee do that if they didn't believe Grusch's claims?
This is what is so frustrating about everyone dismissing this so off hand. Don't you at least want to get to the bottom of how large numbers of high ranking government officials have been convinced - or convinced to lie to us about - the US government being in possession of craft.
_Something_ is happening. Why don't we find out what?
In both cases Occam's Razor points to a bunch of people simply being fooled by their senses and doubling down on that time and time again. Meanwhile we'll waste a whole bunch of money chasing phantoms.
Nah there are other outcomes: they might be lying and it's not a big government psy-op, or they might be misinformed or deluded or caught up in a hysteria about things that are neither psy-ops nor the things that they say they are.
Why would he lie to congress under oath? He would go to jail.
> deluded or caught up in a hysteria about things that are neither psy-ops nor the things that they say they are.
Why would the senators make [this amendment](https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/senate-intelligence-bill-giv...) to NDAA 2024 just 3 weeks after his allegations went public? The key portions being
> "a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material" possessed and to make it available to the AARO director for "assessment, analysis, and inspection."
First-hand would be reserved for the person who saw the UFO, wouldn’t it?
(Maybe that’s why they put quotes around that term, or maybe I’m wrong, I’m just not familiar with how he’s using the turn of phrase.
The quotes are to emphasize the word as a way to distinguish his assertion from deeper hearsay; what Rubio means by first-hand is emphasized with some discussion in the originating interview [0, video].
[0] https://www.newsnationnow.com/banfield/rubio-recent-ufo-whis...
Rubio didn’t claim he saw first hand accounts himself; the ones that talked to him did.
The title says that Rubio heard [someone else's] first-hand account of the situation. That would make it a second-hand account for Rubio, yeah. But it is still correct to say that Rubio was told by someone their first-hand account.
I suspect they were trying to spin it to make him look like a fool, but they should probably stick to things he's actually being a fool about.
UFOs you would expect to be increasingly commonplace as drone and similar technology improves allowing hobbyists as well as domestic and foreign governments to test new form factors.
Aliens however is a different story as surely the conspiracy needed to cover something like that up over decades would be impossible.
