US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
All of this stuff reeks of some kind of psyop. My belief is that for some reason, the US government used psychology tests to identify a select few people who naturally "want to believe". These individuals would take vague evidence and through their own nature would exaggerate and fill in the blanks. They then nudged those individuals with carefully curated credible fake evidence. Then they just sat back and waited for a few of those guys to "leak" the information.
> He left the government in April after a 14-year career in US intelligence.
A government pension requires 20 years IIRC. Grusch is only 36.
The formula: Tell the truth where possible, be vague but suggestive about the rest.
And of course there were secret UFO programs -- if something from Baikonur shows up here, wouldn't it be better if the Kremlin thought it might still remain secret? So sensing, reporting, collecting efforts would be classified.
There is a very very simple explanation, which is that everything he says is true. There is a secret program, they did reverse engineer, they did withhold it from congress, and people did tell him that there is alien stuff.
Why make up silly make believe?
The guy isn't claiming 'oh i saw aliens'. He could simply be telling the absolute truth.
Why so many people told him there were aliens, I dunno, but who cares. Those people aren't the ones whistleblowing and so it doesn't really matter, does it?
I for one believe the guy, 100%
My only complaint is that perhaps he should probably be a bit more circumspect about what actually exists.
Wasn't he in charge of or in the higher end of the government led agency to investigate these things? He doesn't seem to be a nobody just saying he saw things, it was his job to investigate it for the government?
And if the Inspector General is involved, along with the dudes lengthy time in front of congress, surely it's likely that evidence was presented to higher levels of government that the public still can't see legally. I get that this may be a psyop kind of thing, but writing it off as 'he didn't see anything' seems like an incorrect position to hold.
Ugh, I was 100% with you until this point. This is speculative, fantastical, and I think serves to discredit the sober and calm pushback of the type exhibited in the first half of your comment. And that is desperately needed in a moment like this.
Emotionally it is also slowly preparing humanity for the possibility of a confrontation with a power that we possibly can not resist and must obey. Aliens may turn out to have strong theological and sociological views that they want to share with us. This is more than just slowly boiling the constitutional frog in the cauldron of “national security”. Somewhat /g more far fetched but definitely one reason to have ex intelligence grandees from Mosad and CIA (and now this man) come and tell us all about aliens in our midst.
This is the same MO as Stephen Greer's grift about the same thing. Greer claims that he was given access to classified documents and information that say the government is hiding their knowledge of, and interactions with, aliens and UFOs.
In this case, I agree. I usually try to avoid conspiratorial thinking and conspiracy theories, but the DoD and related agencies have been putting out all kinds of information about UFOs in the past few years. My question is: why? The DoD isn’t known for their public relations.
My best speculative guess is that they’re claiming they’ve found alien craft and exotic alien materials because the US is testing aircraft that appear alien with exotic materials and don’t want other nation states to assume it is even terrestrial so they don’t attempt to replicate the technology.
There must be a reason behind the UFO media blitz that has happened lately, it’s not like they’re releasing the info to keep the public informed. Anyone have other ideas? It could be grifters looking to sell a story, mentally ill people misunderstanding jokes or inventing things out of whole cloth, etc.
P.S. I believe intelligent life may exist elsewhere in the universe, but that we’ve never been visited and will never be visited due to the distances involved.
Is it me or is the internet really quick to reach this conclusion? It's definitely not the simplest one you can make.
"The US government" can hardly pass a budget but is somehow presumed to be super competent at psyops and/or concealing evidence of aliens.
Certainly much of the whole present "flat earth" popularity was driven by a bunch of people who thought it'd be funny.
I take just as seriously people who insist UFOs are aliens as those who insist the world is flat. I'm sure you can find somebody on youtube who has been "shown some documents" about how the world isn't round.
Method A: Extensive analysis if this is a first account of facts or hearsay (here is the latest anyway). Extensive analysis of evidence, specially with metadata correlation between evidence arriving from different sources and timelines.
Method B: Analysis of instinctive and immediate body language reactions to focused questions.
"How many?" -> . https://twitter.com/i/status/1665832644230402048 The instinctive eye reaction to this question gives it away...
"How to Tell If Someone Is Lying to You, According to Body Language Experts" - https://time.com/5443204/signs-lying-body-language-experts/
Other than working for the US Government, this guy doesn't seem to have brought anything, so I'm amazed this story has gotten the traction it has. It's not like it's been a slow news week or anything.
These are fantastic claims from a highly ranked and decorated member of the IC, released with official backing/DoD preAuth
Someone has some explaining to do
Speculate away, I'm interested in what this community has to say.
If other countries think there's a serious possibility that the US has alien technology then they'll be extra cautious. I doubt anyone buys it, personally.
But propaganda operations definitely have unintended consequences, I'd personally guess that experiments on the population's willingness to believe the government is at most a side effect. After all, there's wacky stuff like flat earth or refusing to believe in irrational numbers that has no meaningful international relations impact.
It's ironic to use a baseless conspiracy theory to accuse someone else of a disinformation conspiracy.
I feel sad to see that in the top post of an HN discussion.
They've been doing it since the 90s and the Oklahoma City Bombings.
Feels like someone started up the same government UFO psyop program that we had running during the cold war.
Maybe they're just trying to redirect all the Qanon crazies onto getting them chasing their tales looking for UFOs instead.
It reads just like so many claims like we have heard in the past, but this time people think the guy is more reliable.
It is pretty funny that the one of the people often quoted who backs up Grusch's claims is Jonathan Grey. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2241801/)
I'd love to think that alien contact is possible, but as I attempt to learn more and more about physics, travel approaching the speed of light, the mechanics that transformed us from a basic life form to a life form with a consciousness, it just seem incredibly unlikely sadly.
I love the optimism in assuming that being a crackpot and having a career in intelligence are incompatible!
As if humanity's knowledge circa 2023 is the end-all of things!
a) An alien civilization has overcome the massive problems of interstellar travel and is visiting us right now.
or
b) The people making these claims are wrong.
While a) isn't impossible, b) seems so much more likely.
Also if they have the technology to cross interstellar space, surely they have the technology not to be detected by us?
...
"It reads just like so many claims like we have heard in the past"
I mean.... come on people, try harder.
One simple explanation is that Grusch's story is mostly true.
eg: There is a secret project, they have been doing reverse engineering, and they did keep it from congress for a very long time.
This is all the stuff that Grusch can probably prove himself without second hand reporting.
With all the absurdly crazy complexity that has arisen in our universe, and the tiny primate brain you were born with, and the mere 10k years of civilization in our multi-billion year old universe which may be one of a near infinitude stretching back for eternity, you've figured out with high likelihood what is and is not possible. Right.
https://thedebrief.org/fact-check-q-a-with-debrief-co-founde...
If those mechanics are known I'd love to hear them.
If we survive for long enough as a species, either we'll meet races in this manner or we'll be the ones doing it.
For the record I still only assign a fairly low probability that this is what is happening, it's more likely that UAPs are craft from terrestrial origin.
Games within games. Insiders playing credible dupes.
I never reported it or anything, mostly due to not knowing who to call and lack of evidence (cell phone cameras were primitive at the time and it was too dark). We still talk about it occasionally, not really knowing what to make of it.
Someone that I have known for decades told me a few years ago that they were part of a small group that had an experience with something similar to what you are describing. In their case the thing they all described blocked out the stars almost from horizon to horizon as it passed over. It was described as huge, black, and silent with a well-defined edge that one could follow across the sky as the stars in front were blocked and those behind reappeared. They said they didn't notice it until they realized all the normal night sounds had completely stopped as it approached and once it passed, the insects, birds and things resumed their chatter. They don't know what they saw but they do know they did see something unusual. These are college educated people enjoying life in a rural area.
While in college, I also taped a story that a fellow student told one day. I always taped the lectures and transcribed them after class to help remember things and on this particular day the subject somehow turned to UFOs. I would have to replay the tape to know how the segue happened but anyway, if I remember right the professor commented about UFOs not being real and this student interrupted and told his personal encounter story. From memory, he was out with friends riding ranch roads across the part of west Texas where he was raised when one of them pointed out a set of lights over a part of the ranch where there were no roads, buildings, etc. They all saw the lights and decided to investigate and so they followed ranch roads towards them and as they got closer it was apparent that the lights were part of something really unusual and large that was not on the ground but was in the sky. As they got closer it zipped straight up and away and was gone in a couple seconds. I still have the tape but no way to play it. I always recorded over the previous day's lecture after transcribing but for that one I decided I would keep it and start another tape. I know this person to be an ordinary person who got a great education in geoscience and took that into a career with a multinational company eventually as a VP. He was always a no bullshit person.
But some insiders are now willing to take the risk of coming forward for the first time with knowledge of these recovery programs.
Jonathan Grey is a generational officer of the United States Intelligence Community with a Top-Secret Clearance who currently works for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), where the analysis of UAP has been his focus. Previously he had experience serving Private Aerospace and Department of Defense Special Directive Task Forces.
“The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” Grey said. “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”
huh? This is a current NASIC officer saying “The non-human intelligence phenomenon is real. We are not alone,” - isn't that in itself extremely weird/surprising?
Could be generic crap from crash sites of test drones, aircrafts, missiles, satellites etc if its secret stuff are ppl going to inform everyone on the planet?
Just never ending mindlessness thanks to the Attention Economy giving morons too much attention.
A career like this won't protect you from belief or developing an mental illness. Hope he is fine.
For example, UAP stories are often ridiculed on the premise that intelligent alien life would not bother to come all this way just to hide out in the ocean. That's our folk knowledge of aliens: they like to travel, are eager to make contact with other life forms and are capable of doing so. But the elusive behaviour of UAPs is exactly what we would expect from an "unmanned" scientific probe. The home planet would be dozens or hundreds of light years away, so the craft would need to be completely autonomous in the absence of any communication system. Where does an autonomous probe go to look for signs of life? Oceans.
If one were to send a probe, one could wisely plan on purpose to land it in the ocean, deploy submersibles with flight technology and have them just go around and lay low.
They would hide, lay low and their aerodynamic performance might simply be their idea of a modest, basic platform. They would otherwise be wholly unprepared to make contact or perform in air to air combat.
You can just imagine; "hey Eagle, the UFO guy's coming to ask about that UAP report, you know, the one where the IR tracker locked-on to a speck of dust. Let's mention the (nudge, hehe) black-ops alien testing site we saw when we went to file the report"
There are 3 comprehensive possibilities (correct me if you think differently):
1. These crafts are ET origin
2. These crafts are human origin (secrete military tech or similar)
3. This is a psyop
Due to the supposed feeds and eye witness accounts, it seems infeasible there is a 'weather balloon' type explanation
Any of these 3 possibilities is very interesting. I have my own take for what is most likely. But I'd like to hear thoughts of others.
The pilots claim they saw a flying saucer that was rotating in weird ways, and provide a grainy video that's kind of convincing. The analysis proves it was lens flare.
There are additional debunked UAP videos released by the military, including one that is lens bokeh around starlight, which is debunked by showing the configuration of the "triangle UAPs" matches the positions of stars at that time, including additional evidence that the camera used on those ships has triangle aperture.
This tells me there's a chance of a disappointing but realistic option 4: military incompetence. They take these videos, they don't know what they are, so they go into some data pipeline and categorized as UAP. Then people/congress become aware that there are "UAP videos", and we go through this declassification song and dance, only to get these bokeh and lens flare videos, that the military themselves do not know they are bokeh/lens flare, and they have to find out about it on YouTube.
Giving the military more benefit of the doubt, the likely option is 3: psyop. They spread UAP rumors to confuse adversaries, knowing these UAP videos they have are BS. When they release these easily debunked videos, the adversaries could be further confused, still not knowing what they really have.
Yeah!
I used to work with someone who was a Marine F/A-18 weapons officer (back seat guy; I may have the aircraft type wrong). He knew everything there was to know about air combat & ground attack, but outside that, he was a complete moron. I mean, he seriously believed that we stole aircraft technology from aliens, because "there is no way that humans are that smart."
Let's just say I have my doubts.
Watch the introduction to the 4 hour UAP panel that NASA hosted a few days ago[1], they address this.
According to NASA, even highly trained and experienced pilots can easily be fooled, and often reported UAPs are artifacts of the technology that detects them, or are indeed things like weather balloons. For example, NASA even used the example of Navy pilots being fooled by a procession of commercial airplanes queueing to land at an airport 40+ miles away from their base.
They also emphasize that radar, detection systems, etc are not scientific instruments that are suitable for the detection or analysis of this phenomenon. They emphasize that the technology that the Navy et al. use are strictly optimized for defensive/offensive interception of conventional weapons. That's to say that they're calibrated for war and not for accurate scientific observation.
Going back to the procession of airplanes waiting to land, according to the instruments available to pilots and their own observations, those airplanes were doing things that were impossible to do without bending the laws of physics. Yet all they were were just a bunch of airplanes doing what all airplanes do.
> Due to the supposed feeds and eye witness accounts, it seems infeasible there is a 'weather balloon' type explanation
Pilots and their system are fallible, you'd have to assume some argument from authority to believe otherwise, which is why I think the military loves this conspiracy theory. It shifts criticism or suspicion of government and power to a narrative that they control and that inflates the military's competence and abilities, and assumes that the military is looking out for us and willing to tell us the truth.
“Yes I saw it move impossible in the camera”
“Yep you’ve got a speck on your camera. “
This stuff happens all the time mixed with “yeah crazy visual stuff happens”
When the alternative is that an unfathomable amount of energy was used to cross a mind boggling amount of space, you need a very bullet proof argument
4. A collection of shadows, mistakes, pilot fatigue, and instrument malfunction?
A few probably are secret military tech (nothing like antigravity, but I think most people - even in the military - probably don't have a good grasp of what true cutting edge technology is capable of,) but I think there are UFO true believers within the government trying to stir up publicity for funding[0]. To me that is the most intriguing, and plausible, explanation for a lot of this.
Because remember we just went through this with the Chinese balloon shit. "Sources" in the government making the same claims. Rumors about craft defying physics. But it all turned out to be balloons and paranoia and hype.
It's never aliens. It's never aliens.
[0]https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/ufo-believing-pentagon-bosses-...
In short, given prevalence of aliens in popular culture + brains being predictive machines + existence of things that are hard to explain = it would be far more surprising if there weren't people claiming aliens.
Note 1: actual aliens would be really exciting, but Occam's Razor...
Who cares? It's not going to amount to anything. Even if it exists, nobody's gonna let us see it.
It seems every video I've come across, it was all electronic so it has me thinking just a software error.
[1]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-a...
I'd say there is a 4th comprehensive possibility: these are one or more natural phenomenon we've yet to document and may have no intelligence behind them at all.
PSYops. What about being a "navy pilot" validates these claims? That's like saying "Police officers have come out on record to say that bad buys have lazer guns". Of course they would say that, they want everyone to think THEY have big lazer guns too!
like any other piece of the military, Pilots are only allowed to disseminate what the current strategy-focus tells them to disseminate.
* From deep in Oceans
* From subterranean
* From millions of years in past
* From millions of years in future
What if its true? What repercussions would having alien technology have on civilization? Would this fundamentally change beliefs? Influence religion?
EDIT: someone pointed out to make this more stimulating we need constrains, assuming the following is true:
The UFO is likely "rogue" in that it was off course, pilot dead, and we are not currently engaged in hostilities with this other civilization
We Christians would need to answer these questions:
1. Are there animals anywhere else besides earth?
2. If yes, do any of these animals have what we call ‘rational souls’? That is, are they spiritual beings?
3. If there are such spiritual beings, are any or all of them, like us, fallen?
4. If any of them have fallen, have they been denied Redemption by the Incarnation and Passion of Christ? Christ could have come to those worlds also.
5. Finally, if all of the first four questions could be answered yes, is it certain that this is the only possible mode of Redemption?
From a political perspective, it is risky because all our current rules are based on a now-obsolete ontology, nothing needs preservation, we are just animals again, all is material. It creates a power vacuum that some people will rush into.
The rationale for that would be, if you don't have to fear the aliens, and we're tiny specs in the universe, why should you fear other men? We are now one species and if you can't get on board with that, there are no moral consequences to shortening your time here, since as we are not the top of the pyramid, we can no longer be held morally responsible to each other - there is only this new power. If it doesn't control us, nothing does, etc.
I think the religious view would be that they must also know God, and the only way you can trust another species enough to relate to it is either it accepts your dominion, or recognizes some similar principles of divine authority. Someone who has a personal relationship with God is perfectly equipped to relate to other beings as best a human can, whereas without that, they'd have to worry about you stealing stuff.
For this to be an interesting question, you need to specify what exactly is true - then we can game implications.
Are we positing that aliens exist? That FTL/time travel is possible? That aliens are attacking, like right now?
Crafts made deliberately to meet us would have to originate from much closer civilizations unless the civilization has both FTL travel and much more sensitive and high resolution observation technology than we currently believe possible.
Supposing it is a von Neumann probe. There may be a planet or nearby system where these crafts are being built, but we're unlikely to be near the main star/region of the civilization. We might be stuck with just handful of these crafts for probably many (hundreds?) of thousands of years before any real first contact happens.
This is covered fictionally in Cixin’s The Three Body Problem: When Eart learns the existence of Trisolarians tremendous social and technical changes occur.
The truth is more interesting: the galaxy is emptier than it should be.
Plus, we've been around for ages and only briefly let out a bunch of radio waves. I image we might not even generate that many anymore.
By that logic, you could easily image that the universe is teeming with intelligent life that happens to not have sent a powerful radio signal out here, or whose tech development timeline never included wide public radio signal broadcasting.
If it takes something like all that for life to spontaneously erupt, we're likely alone.
> The truth is more interesting: the galaxy is emptier than it should be.
Why should it be less empty and what are the implications that its emptier than it should be?
It really isn't. Do the math, I did (scroll about halfway down): https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2014/11/30/this-jus...
Being very generous, in my opinion, and assuming 1 in 2 systems has a planet/moon that is inhabitable by life as we know it, and that 1 in 2 of those has tool-building life at some point, in our galaxy you get something like 1 tool-building civilization per 600,000 square light-years spread out over 12 billion years.
There's literally no level of evidence I would accept because the premise is contrary to numerous, basic logical inferences.
The only fact I know for certain is that the federal government and military industrial complex has a history of lying and waging information warfare on American citizens. If they tell me aliens are here, there's no way I will believe them. As much as I want to believe, I simply can't, unless I personally have some experience with an alien.
And remember... no matter what happens, no matter what the government or the "aliens" tell you... do not get on the ships!
Although, "specific physical / recorded evidence made publicly available for study" would be even better if the evidence is strong. Once you're at "if it's a hoax/fraud, the perpetrator has advanced science we don't" it's a world-changing thing; maybe it's not an alien, but whatever it is it's amazing.
Basically Federal agents became "convinced" that paranormal stuff is happening at Skinwalker ranch, but that is/was because of significant conflict of interest where they earn income from entertainment enterprises (like History Channel) by leaking information to them -- even information which is completely falsified.
How so?
The argument for no aliens is lack of evidence, not evidence of their lack.
Sounds like you'd accept something that breaks the basic known science then. If they could demonstrate any tech which does not exist, or is wildly outside of the current limits, would that convince you? For example energy use allowing interplanetary travel in a vehicle of unreasonably small size.
And now I'm trying to imagine aliens that look like members of the onion family.
1. Travel faster than light
2. Sustain a peaceful, productive, spacefaring civilization over millions of years to travel here
3. Create AI that can do 1 or 2
Am I missing something here? How can both of these facts be plausibly true? These are genuine questions, not snark.
The paperclip ai swarm’s origin story: some tech startup from 100 light years away screwed up their ai system and went extinct / got turned into paperclips
The universe is devoid of life because all of it, everywhere, has been converted to paperclips by various civilizations badly tuned ai systems. They don’t send out radio signals because, obviously, they need to grow as strong as possible before meeting other paperclip systems; so their kind of paperclips will win
Plus, you might not be able to recover from that failure, e.g. stuck on a planet forever, given that you do not have the material to repair the ship.
You are probably thinking, how come such an advanced species cannot repair its own ship? Well we humans can rarely repair our own ship, we usually rely on professionals to do that. Now that advanced species will have much more advanced systems that no individual can achieve that. Even if they rely on AI, what if AI system broke?
It would seem as though such things would be ridiculous but clearly no matter how far ahead you are in some metric or another, things are still going to be shit now and then.
Are our machines really all that much more reliable than they were 20, 50, 100, 150 years ago? The answer is meh, no, it's a mixed bag. Advancement hasn't made everything have magical quality and reliability. Some things are a lot better, some things are a lot worse.
https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf
If FTL isn't a factor its not necessary for them to have survived millions of years. Maybe we shall be ready to undertake such journeys in a century and perhaps suitable targets exist only decades journey away.
Lastly even capable humans sometimes make simple stupid mistakes. No reason to hold our neighbors to infinitely high standards. Centuries of progress didn't stop us from losing a space probe because of a failure to convert units properly.
Interesting to consider how that revelation might change life very little overall.
1. I wouldn't necessarily assume FTL. But even if we assume "arbitrarily technologically advanced," there's no reason to think that any technology will ever have an absolute 0% chance of failure.
2. It only has to be sufficiently peaceful to not wipe itself out.
3. I don't think AI doing things changes either of the previous two points.
What I find harder to believe is that humans would be able to get their hands on a crashed alien craft and keep it.
Or why couldn't they just have significantly misidentified what it would take to navigate in our atmosphere and have sent a ship that wasn't prepared, and didn't have a way to realize it wasn't prepared?
I can think of a lot of very prosaic reasons.
Maybe ET? -- I don't think that's explained? It's been a lot of years since I saw it.
The reality is that the government is interested in unexplained phenomenon primarily for security reasons. That statement does not say nor imply "Belief in aliens means you're a nutter!" I just get really tired of people acting like "They study this stuff because they know there really are aliens visiting Earth!"
Zogg from Betelgeuse?
Invader Zim?
Hunting tourism is a thing.
E.g.
- did they shoot it down? (this seems to contradict the claims that the aircraft can perform unrealistic maneuvers like massive acceleration / extreme changes in vector)
- did some random farmer stumble upon the craft? (then why didn't the farmer post photos of it online and/or speaking out about it)
- where was it found and where is it today?
Note: I'm not saying there isn't ET. But some first principle questions seems like they need to be answered before people jump to conclusions.
“Sergeant, I’m telling you, I saw floating meta orbs - it’s aliens! The pentagon said they exist!”
EDIT—found it with "site:*.mil":
> The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report. This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.
https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press-Releases/display-pre...
Now, if that playbook is seen by someone and then goes through several games of telephone I wouldn't be shocked if it turned into "we have retrieved vehicles of non-human origin."
And as crazy it sounds there may also be a mystical component to reality that conventional science cannot (currently) explain.
The topic is vast and deep and may have profound implications about humanity and the universe. But like many, we can only speculate until more hard data is released and further research into this "phenomenon" is conducted.
And still no pictures of ufos. Or Bigfoot. Or Nessie.
Edit: apparently this is actually bs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs
Simulation: https://www.metabunk.org/gimbal/
I’m certain there are plenty of countries and groups that would proudly parade around a crashed UFO if it came down on their soil. Maybe these craft spend 99% of their time hanging out over highly secure US military sites.
Sounds pretty boring to me to come all this way to observe ancient technology.
This suggestion was made at the recent Required podcast about Lockheed Martin.
There is a white hat team somewhere in the DoD whose only job is to develop technology and software to make other aviation software instrumentation fail or perform incorrectly. It would be absurd if this were NOT the case.
Saving this for later to say I told you so :).
1080p 30fps video? No.
High resolution photos? No.
Any evidence to back up the extraordinary claims? No.
Sorry, but you are crazy if you believe this.
Given that, we know there's a lot of people who will claim extraordinary things. So, chances are that some sucker (of which the military will have a whole bunch on account of being so large) completely misinterpreted something completely inane and decided that aliens are here.
To top it off, the focus of the story, David Charles Grusch, is a "a former intelligence official."
Pardom me for disregarding this as the diversion it appears to be. The US military has quite a track record on this kind of thing. It's not hard to think of reasons why such diversions might be deployed right now, either.
Maybe some kind of physical evidence - any physical evidence - will be presented. If so, I'm happy to change my mind. Until then, there's zero compelling reason to believe any of it and every reason to think Grusch either a liar or a stooge.
"From 2019-2021, he was the representative of the reconnaissance office to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the co-lead for UAP analysis at the NGA and its representative to the task force."
> Zero specific claims.
The specific claim is that he has provided to congress documentation on successful non-human craft retrieval programs hidden from congress, under oath. He makes no claims about the projects other than that he was not a part of them and that he was provided said documentation on them.
The U.S. Inspector General called the claims "credible and urgent" and congress is planning a session on them.
Back in the day I believed in some of this stuff because there were stories from the 60's about alien remains that looked like insects. Because of course they'd have to sustain high g's crossing light years. They'd also be very lightweight, to keep the mass down. Completely sensical.
Then somebody made up warp drives and every account switched to gray humanoids. Every conspiracy is so low effort and lazy now. But millions will believe it.
I've never been super clear on what the cultural reason for aliens <-> USA is though. Although I suppose it's different in that Godzilla was an intentional fictional creation, while the fascination with aliens hopes they're actually real.
https://youtube.com/shorts/mMmBC2nwcjY?feature=share3
What do you get when you have a multi-billion dollar defense budget and some of the best engineers on the planet?
> “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”
Everyone’s already encountered the starting conditions in most other countries. US is the only one winning Civilization Earth. I’m a naturalized US citizen, for example. Could have ended up anywhere but it’s best here in terms of opportunity and making new stuff.
Anecdotally, I'll note that this has sent folks I am acquainted with who believe that the Replicants walk among us (or variations thereof), right off the deep end. This validates what they've been asserting, and which people have pooh-pooh'd, all along.
Man, the fox is loose in the mental health henhouse. And please know that I don't judge or claim to understand that place.
It just all seems so irresponsible.
It sort of reminds me of the "God of the Gaps" fallacy.
Even if the US were inclined to keep their space ship secret, other countries should be encountering UAPs given that the US sees hundreds per year. Some ground control operator should eventually share an in-focus picture at some point.
He may be wrong, but he didn't do anything wrong.
This makes it sound like the US govt is recovering material that has been found lying around, maybe due to a crash, or debris from an accident, or a piece of a UFO that broke off, etc.
Simple question. Why is it that only the US govt is recovering this? Presumably if these are pieces of matter that aliens are leaving behind unintentionally, they would have left them behind distributed across the world. So why aren’t other, less allegedly secretive governments with spy agencies that are less capable or protect data better, not also recovering such material? Why, in hundreds of years of UFOs visiting the earth, and leaving debris behind, are random goat farmers not finding this debris lying around?
How has every govt that has managed to find this debris managed to keep it a secret?
On the other hand, I think that it's in the realm of possibilities that there are some AI-controlled Von Neumann probes on Earth, sleeping in the bottom of the ocean, and checking on us from time to time. It's not unlikely that there's a point in time where they think we're ready to know the truth and they reveal themselves and their knowledge.
It would literally be easier to build giant machines using 1960s technology to land people on the moon and return them safely than it would be to keep a secret like “fake moon landings”.
Now imagine the secret being “alien intelligence/time travelers/angelic beings are visiting earth on the regular”. No matter how good some of us are at keeping secrets, this one would have gotten out long ago.
That said, I’d still love to be demonstrated wrong.
How would you explain it as any earthly tech? And if not US, what nation hass more advanced tech than the US?
And isn't as likely that alien civilizations would send a probe, rather than arrive with their organic selves in a big spaceship needing food etc? Like us with our Mars rover, etc, wouldn't they send a small remote controlled probe to check out alien worlds?
Either we have some grifters who don't have a job and are looking to make something out of their background. Or the US is doing some psyops for who knows why. Or just plain old mistaking one thing for another, perhaps through mental illness or jumping to conclusions.
How they can easily zip to the LEO in less than a minute like it wasn't a big thing at all vs. how a human built rocket needs a carefully planned operation just not to blow up even before raising up from the very floor?
They spread that misinformation to cover the fact that they had new radar tech that let them bomb at night.
I wonder if the US gov has some kind of hovering tech and they're smoke signaling it under UFO?
step 1: Throw shit against the wall
step 2: See what sticks
step 3: Amplify that messaging
step 4: Exercise power through providing spectacle and influencing attention
step 5: Pacify with spectacle or agitate differences through amplified narratives to create chaos or division
Much less commonly said, but still true, is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary trust. I do not trust the people saying these things. That I can not 100% guess their motivations for this is not particularly relevant. They have a long history of consistent and large lies. Failing to take that into account when they're making this sort of claim is foolishness.
In fact at this point they're really in a Catch-22... if they really do try to come out with "Yes! Aliens! Really!" then we have the question of, why then were you lying the up to this point then? Because if they are real you've been lying and lying and lying and lying beyond my capacity to express in a single sentence... why should I trust you now, then?
I mean, it isn't that hard to imagine how "alien threat!" will require us to, once again, give them more power. It's absolutely astonishing how no matter what the problem is, the solution is to give them more power.
And it's in this exact context that the Pentagon started to release UFO videos and the military was publicly patenting sci-fi level technology like a "craft using an inertial mass reduction device." [2] Not only does the patent read like it was written by a sci-fi jargon-generator LLM, but there's absolutely no point to it. Were something like this real, you would keep it beyond classified to not only maximize your national benefit from it, but to try to keep it out of the hands of peer nations for as long as possible. With it published, if e.g. China or Russia was going to make this, what now? Are you going to sue them? Maybe get the WTO to give them a stern talking to. Its one and only purpose is to publicize "secret" research from the military.
So why? Literally the only explanation I can see is it just being another ham-fisted recruitment effort. 'You can go make a living making software pushing ads on people who don't want them, or you can enlist in the military, travel the world, and perhaps even one day get clearance to see and start working where the "real" science is happening.'
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[1] - https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-te...
[2] - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en?inventor=S...
Why go through the trouble to refute one unlikely and poorly supported hypothesis just to jump right into a new one? Has Occam taught us nothing? There are no successfully hidden "conspiracies" of that scale. Maybe someone can run a successful assassination once in a while and keep it under wraps for a decade or so, but that's as far as it goes. Lips are too loose and threads are too easy to pull, especially in the internet era.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Dutchman
With everyone handwringing about climate change clearly being our doom, has no one once wondered if it might be partly responsible for an upsurge in sightings of unexplained aerial phenomenon?
Seems like something a nation state might float if another nation state was (or was planning) ramping up some newfangled drone espionage missions.
OMG aliens -> nice advanced tech you got there
Intact -> would be a shame if someone ratcheted up tensions by reverse engineering it
Partial -> stay off my land
illegally withheld from Congress -> if mom and dad find out we're both in trouble
What's going on is something like emergent disinformation. A combination of
* intentional withholding of facts (we don't report on how much we know about foreign spying and interfernce with aircraft, etc),
* incompetent reporting within the government (the person denying things is a low level public relations person who isn't told much and knows very little, forced to change stories when scraps of information come down)
* memes (UFOs go through waves of popularity of public interest)
* legitimate hallucinations
* hoaxes
* rare atmospheric phenomena
What is almost certainly happening is we've got foreign spies etc. with ordinary, unusual, and unfamiliar aircraft bothering us along with thrillseekers with drones etc. on an uptick because drones are cheaper and more possible these days. There might be some really interesting secret aircraft both foreign and domestic flying around, and generally the governments aren't showing their cards about what they can do and what they know... they benefit from the confusion and conspiracies keeping their adversaries off balance chasing the unknown.
In the end the people who do know everything know some interesting but still certainly rather mundane information. It's not a case of a grand conspiracy where somebody is trying actively to manipulate public opinion, just vague intentional lack of communication and keeping secrets by just not telling most people anything involved.
just go on the internet and tell lies?
So basically it's the steps to building popular consensus despite missing or contrary facts.
Fascinating.
Because it's all bullshit, that's why. Granted, the Brits silenced themselves so that the entire world didn't know that they were the first to build a computer, so I suppose the secrecy required is possible.
But in all of human history, we're expected to believe that an alien craft was discovered by the U.S. gov, at the right time for us to have the tech to discover it and that this was the only craft around?
Surely an alien species' timelines aren't going to magically line up with ours, surely a supposed craft could've landed at any point in our short history on this planet.
If, at some point in the future, we get small, handy, cheap, good quality cameras that people make a habit of always carrying around, then surely the nature of these phenomena will easily be determined.
Let’s suppose that they didn’t travel to dispose of resources abundant on earth (in which case it seems obvious that they would most likely already ostensibly or furtively dominating the world with their advanced technologies). For example, instead they want to make tourism in invisibility-intangibility suits: "look my darling, how quaint this planet is!".
I very strongly doubt any group of human could catch an alien vehicle of such an advanced civilization.
At the scale of the galaxy, alien probes could have launched long before humans were even a thing.
Or if they had expected intelligent life, they wouldn’t know how intelligent the life would be. They could suspect equal intelligence to theirs.
In the chance that this equally intelligent life could capture this probe, self destruct may be the optimal strategy.
People are making the mistake of assuming an all knowing intelligent life-form. There are at least some feasible scenarios where alien craft could crash into earth.
“We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity.” ― Ben Rich CEO Lockheed Skunk Works
Call me naive but I don’t think the desire to keep the status quo is greater than the desire to be the literal savior.
Market forces are stronger than government forces.
If free energy had that effect, electricity prices wouldn't sometimes go negative.
Also, why would instant travel (at what resource cost?) be any worse than e.g. telepresence robots for humans and just-in-time delivery for goods?
What's more likely?
1. That aliens who can break the speed of light were successfully shot down decades ago by the US using... a phantom f-4?
2. The "whistleblower" is spreading FUD to encourage an increase in the airforce budget
Extraordinary claims needs extraordinary evidence.
Perhaps they had inspiration
HN is in for quite the gut punch. All of this is happening because of the 2023 NDAA provisions where congress invalidated all NDAs blocking disclosure (to congress, not the public).
Not saying this guy is 100% legit, but hang on…
....but it's not aliens.
Happens every now and then, but lately, the UFO crazies keep resurfacing every few months.
The dumbest are dragging down credibility, as usual. If there were aliens, they'd have communicated or killed us by now.
Lmao.
What is the connection ? Headlines:
> *Whistleblower former intelligence* official says government possesses ‘intact and partially intact’ craft of non-human origin
And here is Snowden interview from 5 hours ago: SNOWDEN REVELATIONS 10-Year Anniversary: Glenn Greenwald Speaks with Snowden & Laura Poitras on the Past, Present, & Future of Their Historic Reporting | SYSTEM UPDATE #93
https://rumble.com/v2sgyx2-snowden-revelations-10-year-anniv...
Try searching the web "Whistleblower former intelligence" it is all about UFOs now.
then add "before:2022" to search query, this is what CIA trying to do.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://www.google.com/search?q=Whistleblower+former+intelli...
...
Grusch said it was dangerous for this “eighty-year arms race” to continue in secrecy because it “further inhibits the world populace to be prepared for an unexpected, non-human intelligence contact scenario.”
“I hope this revelation serves as an ontological shock sociologically and provides a generally uniting issue for nations of the world to re-assess their priorities,” Grusch said.
A conspiracy spanning the better part of century should have more high-level whistleblowers than Grusch and Grey. If their claims are proven out the names Grusch and Grey will be immortalized in history. We still talk about the Gutenberg printing press. Centuries from now people will still talk about Grusch and Grey, and how they kick-started a new era of human knowledge.
Are we to believe that over the course of eighty years, comprising hundreds if not thousands of individuals, many of whom would have access to the same documents and materials, not a single one of these individuals, motivated by either honor or ego, decided to make this world historical disclosure?
The story seems engineered to appeal to the conspiracy theorist. A brave iconoclast bucks the system and exposes a massive coverup - a truth that just happens to confirm all the poorly sourced and speculative claims made by the true believers. Wait, why haven't we seen any miraculous technology derived from alien tech? Ahhh, this tech exists, but it's hoarded by a secretive cabal who may or may not themselves be aliens/reptiles or blood-drinking elites. Etcetera, etcetera.
On the other hand ... it would be apropos if bureaucratic inertia led to a world-shattering disclosure. And the conspiracy theories could be 95% b.s. and 5% truth.
For all those reasons I'm not really convinced. Are Grusch and Grey convinced because the evidence is that overwhelming? Are they seeped in online UFO conspiracy culture, and reading a very slanted interpretation into the intelligence documents they have accessed? Are the analyses the military has run on any recovered materials sufficient to determine an origin in non-human intelligence? Have any experts outside the military examined and tested these materials? Does there exists genuine recovered craft ala Independence Day or are the "craft" large meteors that, if you squint, kind of look like a spacecraft? Have they recovered biological material?
Ultimately we won't be able to make a true determination until we get some actual evidence. First, reviewing any documents that supposedly contain these extraordinary claims. Second, interviews with other intelligence officials who have spoken with Grusch and have had access to the materials. Third, getting these materials into the hands of relevant experts, to determine if non-human intelligence is the most likely source.
They're not coyly darting to and fro in a game with, almost exclusively American, pilots.
They're not hiding themselves from humanity, for whatever reason.
Their immense power would be like the Sun shining next to humanity's candle. They would not care, or even know to care, about how we would react to their presence.
Their interaction with Earth would be like Earth's with Mars. Sure we take steps to sterilize Mars rovers to prevent contamination but only because when we drill the hell out of that rock in broad daylight for all the Martians to see we want to make sure we only get Mars stuff.
I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.
And honestly it's not that different from business made by climate change, AI threats, pandemic and so on (that I can summarize as "fear"), only that there is need more money... or the job is at risk...
P.S: I'm not thinking some of them are not real threats, just that they are abused.
Why? The most obvious questions will be asked, and those questions will hurt the financial interests of the powers-that-be.
Questions like "how did they get here?" and "what is the energy source that powers these crafts?" Politicians with stock portfolios chock full of Oil&Gas stocks will certainly not want that info seeing the light of day. Same with those who hold defense stocks - all those trillions spent and they can't shoot down a small craft?
That's nothing to say of the major religious organizations that will inevitably whine and cry that their gravy train is also now also permanently derailed. No more tithing or mandatory donations to a god when there are now species from another planet coming and going as they please, and are likely thousands of years ahead of us.