Hacker News Reader

Comment by logicalmonster | Hacker News Reader

What's this constant UFO stuff a distraction for?

One of these stories just happened to gain traction. The media latches on to it. So then the gov has to do something about it. Now all eyes are on these phenomena. So every event like this gets reported on and the government has to do something.

While you are probably right, this is the boring explanation. We’ve got political axes to grind here, can’t let banal stupidity of the media cycle get in the way.

Have you never experienced the beating of the war drums? It starts as a soft rumble.

That’s my feeling as well. If I had to guess, I think the US government believes China will invade Taiwan soon and the US wants to mount a full scale defense, which would involve direct confrontation with China. The only problem is the US citizens couldn’t care less what happens to Taiwan, which is just some random APAC country for all they know.

So, in order to gain support they’re drumming up nationalist fervor by shooting down Chinese spy craft that they previously considered mostly harmless.

Honestly if that's what this is its pretty weak. Most people are not going to want to go to war over a few balloons. Especially with China. That's a war that impacts the US mainland. No once comes out of this close to whole. Plus it we are already in a proxy war with Russia. I don't think anyone wants to fight Russia and China at the same time, regardless of how bruised Russia is currently.

It’s really unusual how frequent this type of news is lately. I wonder if we will ever find out the full story on this.

They removed filters from their radar data. Now these things are showing up. Expect to find private entities being a lot more careful if filling flight plans.

This latest one looks like it dropped its payload before being shot down

they do a fly by before they shoot these objects down, so they know that they're not shooting downed manned objects

Weren't said filters removed in response to overlooking the large balloon from China earlier this month?

The UFO distraction goes back to at least 2021 when the US military formally admitted that there have been observed objects in the sky that they cannot account for.

I saw this filter claim earlier today. What is the source on this?

the US shooting down unidentified aircraft over the continental US is unusual for any period of time in the nation's history. the US is at least an ocean's worth away from most other countries so having foreign interference is a big deal

Probably the chemical train derailment going on in Ohio/Pennsylvania.

My take is it is either:

- a foreign adversary toying with US Air Force finally getting to taste the sharp end of it

- or some secret USAF experiment getting out of hand

- USAF putting on a show

- something else

- Nothing out of the ordinary, but attention placed on it after the highly visible balloon incident. In another couple of weeks we will go back to not caring and reports will fade away in kind.

I'd say it is kind of unusual when air-to-air missiles are fired in American airspace.

Two were already in Canada when shot down. The third was on the cusp of entering Canada. The US military patrolling Canadian airspace which such fervor is the most unusual part.

Maybe this?

"Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US": https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-bal...

Wouldn't shooting down presumably publicly undisclosed surveillance on civilians something they want to keep quiet and the public unawares of? Shooting them down does the opposite of hiding something --these new objects are small enough to go undetected by people on the ground.

All three were headed to Canada and the latest two were already in Canadian airspace before being taken down by the US military. Reports don't make it seem like they were anything Canadian forces wouldn't be able to handle on their own, so why is the US military so concerned with patrolling Canadian skies? If you want to run with the given theory, perhaps it is that Canada is well aware of them and doesn't want them surveilling Canadian lands, thus the US military is taking them down at their expense to keep peaceful relations.

Relax. There were 2 sentences about it in the article.

Could have just been all of the sweet sweet clicks generated by the first balloon story now they’re all making headlines.

My opinion, to be taken with a grain of salt:

Social fragmentation in the USA -along political lines, Trumpism, Qanon, Covid response, social media disinformation campaigns - has reached a point where it is no longer only extremists that think a civil war is becoming possible.[1]

There is always some percentage of the population that engages in conspiracism, but in 2020s the kinds of conspiracism we see are are spreading more rapidly and are nearly entirely politically charged- ie along partisan lines, and enough people are angry that it has already resulted in an actual attempted coup.

If this conspiracism were to evolve more towards less partisan areas (UFOs/aliens/ghosts/near-death-experiences), then the risk of a coup goes down. Facilitating this transition in conspiracist focus could be one of the lowest cost & highest payoff "social programs" ever undertaken by the intelligence services.

Attempts by intelligence services at intentionally steering the culture towards more acceptible, less politically charged subject matter are not new, and there have been accusations[2] that Abstract Expressionism was intentionally promoted by the CIA to undermine more leftist and political art movements.

If the CIA nurtures propaganda campaigns in foreign countries, we can imagine them looking at the near-coup of January 6th and asking some hard questions about whether propaganda campaigns would be far more benefit if redirected to focus on the US domestic citizen.

[1] A journalist who has spent the last few years researching this widening social fracturing is Jeff Sharlet, whose forthcoming book is called "The Undertow: Scenes from a slow civil war"

[2] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com