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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

Seems like we already got the gist of this "report" from what's already been leaked / disclosed.

"Of the unidentified 'things' out there, we know they aren't our military. Beyond that we don't know, but we don't think it's a foreign country or aliens. But it might be either. Or both. Or something else. Any questions?"

And of course anything really interesting will be in the "classified annex". So in short, the general public will know exactly as much about UFO's / UAP's after this report is published as they do today.

This helps, how?

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I think one thing it does is knocks out a lot of the de-facto 'debunker' style arguments that it's a balloon/swamp gas/weather phenomena etc when the government concludes that it's a physical object with an unknown point of origin that they've critically analysed and concluded that they don't have an answer for.

To some extent I guess. But arguably even dating back to the Project Blue Book[1] days, the USG has always conceded that some small portion of "UFO" events were actually inexplicable. Sure, they maintained that most UFO incidents had prosaic explanations, but I don't think they ever argued that it was "all".

Compared to the conclusions from PBB:

    The Air Force supplies the following summary of its 
    investigations:

    1. No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the 
    Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our 
    national security;
    2. There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by 
    the Air Force that sightings categorized as 
    "unidentified" represented technological developments 
    or principles beyond the range of modern scientific 
    knowledge; and
    3. There was no evidence indicating that sightings 
    categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial 
    vehicles.

It seems like the biggest change in the messaging may be around (2). And I guess that's something...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book

Probably just serves as a confirmation as to what exactly is true that has been reported and making minor clarifications but agreed, there probably won't be a ton of net new information for the public. But the fact that the government is sharing is interesting since they've been tight lipped about this for a long timel

It may also contain new cases that we don't know yet.

Not our military, not foreign country, and not aliens. That leaves…ourselves in a different time/dimension?

That really angry guy with the offices under a volcano. They've got lots of security in slick looking outfits.

Might also be a couple of mice, you know, the one with the gigantic head.

The leaked info is that there is no evidence for or against it being aliens and that it is not a domestic asset. I don’t think foreign assets have been completely ruled out but we’d better hope that’s not the explanation.

Elves. It has to be elves.

The collective belief of Flat Earthers made it possible for them to return from the Undying Lands, but now they have a space fleet.

> Not our military, not foreign country, and not aliens. That leaves…

A prototype jet owned by Lockheed and flown by a civilian test pilot. That could be called "not our military" without lying. A weather balloon launched by some civilian agency could also be "not our military."

I suppose Silurians of some sort, hidden deep underground or under the oceans, might not exactly count as "aliens". So maybe that?

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