Comment by wcarss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wcarss | Hacker News Reader

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This feels a little bit like reading some parts of the Silmarillion -- back story details expanding on old things we already knew.

At the least though, the degree and the tonality of banal detail here, with some public records corroboration, decreases the odds this was ever in any way part of some grand strategy of disinformation, or a leak of something big that had been held under wraps. It reads as just a credentialed (and convincing) kook who got someone with authority to listen to him.

Maybe that person in authority thought "well, it doesn't cost much to try", or, "we need to keep this guy (Pais) happy so he'll finish his other more important tasks" -- then again, maybe they did think in terms of grand disinfo strategy. But nothing outlandish is really required to explain what we can now see.

Could very well be. Though, it seems like the attention given by the people in authority was a little too genuine.

> After one of his academic papers describing the patents was accepted for publication in 2016, Pais wrote in an email to several NAVAIR employees that “What is most unique about this paper is that it has already won the approval of Dr. [REDACTED], one of the world’s top authorities in Advanced Power and Propulsion/Quantum Vacuum Engineering, who has given his unreserved approval of this paper, calling it “a very good paper.” [REDACTED] has also forwarded the paper to several of his colleagues, including [REDACTED], another top subject matter expert.”

As the article very briefly notes, that Dr. [REDACTED] may well be Hal Puthoff, whose book Pais likely read, and who then would appear to have perhaps directly inspired Pais' ideas. Said more disparagingly: it may only show that some kook liked hearing their ideas parroted back to them.

Right? Whenever I've looked at the alien Navy stories it always seems to boil down to someone wanting to be conned and a con man willing to oblige. It's embarrassing. The people calling the shots in politics and military do not have good noses and don't appreciate the value of peer review.

From a couple web searches, there aren't too many people involved in "Quantum Vacuum Engineering."

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