WASHINGTON — The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.

Retired Maj. David Grusch’s highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was Congress’ latest foray into the world of UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs. While the study of mysterious aircraft or objects often evokes talk of aliens and “little green men,” Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.

Grusch said he was asked in 2019 by the head of a government task force on UAPs to identify all highly classified programs relating to the task force’s mission. At the time, Grusch was detailed to the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates U.S. spy satellites.

“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” he said.

Asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.

doubt

The Pentagon has denied Grusch’s claims of a coverup. In a statement, Defense Department spokeswoman Sue Gough said investigators have not discovered “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.” The statement did not address UFOs that are not suspected of being extraterrestrial objects.

Grusch says he became a government whistleblower after his discovery and has faced retaliation for coming forward. He declined to be more specific about the retaliatory tactics, citing an ongoing investigation.

“It was very brutal and very unfortunate, some of the tactics they used to hurt me both professionally and personally,” he said.

Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., chaired the panel’s hearing and joked to a packed audience, “Welcome to the most exciting subcommittee in Congress this week.” But members of both parties asked Grusch about his study of UFOs and the consequences he faced.

“I take it that you’re arguing what we need is real transparency and reporting systems so we can get some clarity on what’s going on out there,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

Some lawmakers criticized the Pentagon for not providing more details in a classified briefing or releasing images that could be shown to the public. In previous hearings, Pentagon officials showed a video taken from an F-18 military plane that showed an image of one balloon-like shape.

Pentagon officials in December said they had received “several hundreds” of new reports since launching a renewed effort to investigate reports of UFOs.

At that point, “we have not seen anything, and we’re still very early on, that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin,” said Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. “Any unauthorized system in our airspace we deem as a threat to safety.”

can't believe there's still politicians suffering from weather-balloon hysteria. posadist-nuke

  • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    whistleblower leaks incriminating information that has some legal and PR consequences: treasonous, prison time

    whistleblower leaks earthshattering information that would entirely change human society planet-wide and have serious, probably negative, implications for earth religions: senate hearings, interviews, book sales, joe rogan podcasts

    it's almost like there's only consequences when you're leaking real information, and nothing but cash money if you're leaking sci fi make-em-ups

    • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      What, you mean to tell me this guy would have been "heart attack gun'd" yesterday if this was real? Especially considering what he is saying is being vehemently denied by the Pentagon?

      Nahhhhhh, extraterrestrial life forms capable of traveling to Earth (or their machines) are definitely being captured by the American military, who have also managed to stay quiet about it for nearly a century

  • aaro [they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.

    I love the idea that aliens are competent enough for interstellar travel and they use that technology to skirt just narrowly around our field of view instead of establishing diplomatic relations or sucking the uranium out of our planet's core and leaving, but then when they get here their darn cars break down and they just ditch them for us to pick up

    • yastreb
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

      • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Anything coming from outside the solar system to earth's radius is picking up over 100,000 miles per hour plus whatever speed it was approaching at, plus or minus another 30,000 miles for the earth's orbital speed.

        The idea that something traveled for aeons, but by accident only managed to slow down by 129,900 to 129,500 miles per hour and lightly crashed into the earth seems kind of silly.

        Like driving at 130 miles an hour towards a person, smashing the break, and grinding to a stop so perfectly the bumper just boops them.

    • Teekeeus [comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s

      TIL the americans first learnt of the existence of french people in the 1930s

    • NPa [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I love the idea that aliens are competent enough for interstellar travel and they use that technology to skirt just narrowly around our field of view

      gangstalking, but with aliens instead of the feds

  • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
    hexagon
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Personally I totally get it tho; if i were a balding 36yo at the NRO and wanted to shake things up at work I too would probably start whistle-blowing shit like:

    jon-yell "Stalin had Trotsky killed because he knew Lenin & Trotsky had irrefutable proof that aliens played a role in the Feb revolution!!! How do you think the USSR almost beat us to putting a man on the moon? Do I need to spell it out for the entire Oversight Committee?????"

  • solaranus
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

  • flowernet [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    here is the run down: it's probably not a psyop by the government, though maybe this landed in their lap and they want to exploit it for more air force funding.what seems initially like a bunch of disparate threads of crazy quickly collapses into a relatively small circle of UFO fanatics who have been working to publicize their hoax for decades. Grusch specifically can only said to be "credible" because he was involved with the UAP task force, which was shut down after they realized it was a complete joke run by luntics.

    good timelines:

    https://twitter.com/MiddleOfMayhem/status/1674818295894274054

    https://washingtonspectator.org/spaceship-of-fools/

    • space_comrade [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Yeah I'm kinda on the fence if it's just UFO grifters grifting where they can or if there's some merit to this, I'm open to both possibilities at this point.

      What this twitter thread doesn't explain is for example David Fravor, the pilot who also testified in congress yesterday about his experience of apparently seeing some pretty weird shit. What's in it for him? Why would he become a UFO grifter all of a sudden after a fairly successful military career?

      Also wouldn't grifting congress have some repercussions? Weren't they speaking under oath?

      Either way until somebody provides actual tangible evidence it's just stories. It's kinda fun to think about tho.

  • RonJonGuaido [none/use name]
    ·
    1 year ago

    wow, finally a credible witness, brought to the halls of power -- surely he has brought with him many corroborating documents and first hand alien artifacts, right?

  • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I'm unable to not see this as a psy-op. If aliens are technologically advanced enough to travel here, they're technologically advanced enough to not crash their ships and to decide whether or not we know about them.

    • MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      These ufo “leaks” always and I mean always end up as a call for more MIC funding because maybe it’s the evil Chinese and Russians instead of UFOs.

      It’s a sensationalist form of fear mongering. The UFOs are sensationalist bait and the prize is more feed in the trough because the piggies gotta eat.

    • TheCaconym [any]
      cake
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      If aliens are technologically advanced enough to travel here, they're technologically advanced enough to not crash their ships and to decide whether or not we know about them

      You cannot attribute any motivation to something that is, by definition, alien.

      For all we know such crashes - and awareness of their presence - could absolutely be the point of their presence, and something voluntary on their part to affect our species, for example

      Highly suspicious of a psy op as well mind you (mainly because those new testimonies are so absolutely batshit insane; give actual proof already if there's something), just pointing out that's not a good argument

      • tripartitegraph [comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think my only beef with your point is that it is nonfalsifiable. I don't think it's wrong necessarily, because sure, aliens are alien, but then we can speculate anything.

      • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        'Alien' simply means 'extraterrestrial life form'. We can debate what we mean by 'life-form' until a new pope comes over the moon but intentional, intelligent, interactive and to some degree autonomous behaviour, self-maintenance of its own structure, homeostasis, seem pretty essential. That it's evolved is not essential but seems very likely (unless its more likely that to reach such a level of technological advancement the species would normally be a superintelligent, designed type of entity).

        It does not mean, as you're using it, sophistically, 'absolutely unknowable'. It would be an organism, likely evolved, and evolved functions likes intentions, desires and so on, or whatever you want to call the mechanisms that determine its behaviour, are going to reflect the fact that they are evolved. It must have basic survival mechanisms or instincts, eitherwise is would not have propagated and continued to exist. This of course changes once we consider culture, if they have something like culture (which they may not). Culture, especially if they have superintelligent control over their own biological and cultural evolution, is something which makes it more difficult to predict an alien's behaviour, I agree.

        Nevertheless, saying that we 'by definition' can't know anything about something is effectively saying nothing at all about it. You might as well call it the noumenon and be done with it. Even if we just consider motivations, you seem either to be assuming that they do not have motivations, or that we cannot know if they have something like motivations, or that they perhaps do but even if they do we cannot know what any of those motivations are. Motivations are simply a way in which an organism causes behaviour in itself, in a relatively targeted and coherent way. To an extent you are correct, but if something is going to claim intelligent life exists, then we need evidence that it is life, that it is intelligent, and we need to have an idea of what that intelligence consists in, and we have no way of doing that but on the basis of our own intelligence. I haven't seen any explanation for why the claimed behaviour of these UFOs would indicate intelligence-wise, other than surveillance, but they don't need to be here to do that if they're that advanced. The only basis I have at the moment is this 'testimony'. Bar actual hard public evidence to the contrary, I'm not going to buy it, though I'd love to be proven wrong. The best explanation, if these are legit (big doubt) is that it's a kind of social experiment against us. But why would they do that?

        This brings us back to Posadism: is it necessary for a space-faring civilization to be communist? A communist society implies a certain kind of morality or sense of ethics, a common basic set of agree rules for behaviour. If such a social formation is necessary for higher levels of technological advancement, then I do not think such a society would just fuck with us like this. Then again, perhaps very differently evolved intelligent species undergo completely different sets of stages of social development, and never pass through anything like feudalism, capitalism or socialism. Perhaps they have a hive-mind.

        We keep on coming back to the same issue of what can we say about alien behaviour. The only behaviour we can go on empirically are earth's own. We can do that with very different species to ourselves. On that basis I do not understand their behaviour givent he testimony. Just saying they 'might, hypothetically, because we don't know' we so different that this testimony is coherent with some form of motivations is trivially true, but strikes me as bad reasoning. It makes for good science fiction and we have to think about it and be open to it, but I think there is likely in principle a way to read into behaviours what the intentions are over time when observing a social organism. Maybe we actually just have to wait to we actually encounter such life. If these testimonies are legit, then they are historically important evidence in beginning to describe and analyse the behaviour of other forms of life.

    • space_comrade [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      If aliens are technologically advanced enough to travel here, they're technologically advanced enough to not crash their ships

      You're basing this conclusion on what exactly?

      • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        The amount of evidence these kind of 'whisteblowers' cite is often based on the idea that there have been alot of crashes and alot of acquisition of material from extremely technologically advanced extraterrestrial life forms.

        I'm pointing out something very basic: consider how technologically advanced you have to be to travel from any other star system in the galaxy, let alone beyond it, to here. With current human tech, it would take around 73,000 years to get to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri.

        It is literally beyond our capacity to understand how that is technically feasible. It is another or several levels of technological advancement beyond us. We might seem like dumb animals to such a species. I'm just personally not at all convinced that such a mind-bogglingly advanced species would allow itself that amount error on missions where it would crash or allow itself to be studied that often. Otherwise it seems to me that you're implying that their spy ships crash more often than our own planet's countries' spy-planes in enemy territories. I'd assume that they can travel at light-speed. If they cannot, they can still travel at such speeds that their level of technological and economic development has to be astouding. Like literally practically and technically inconceivable for us at our current level of development. I don't see how its reasonable to assume that such an intelligent species is going to be crashing all over the place, given the amount of precise planning and technical knowledge you need to get here in the first place.

        Also: why is it only Americans who seem to be claiming all this shit?

        Also, we are also an extremely violent species, hopefully still in the infancy of our civilizational development, so I don't see why another species, who have decided not to fuck us over when they could easily annihilate us, would think it desirable, wise, or whatever, to give us access to their tech.

        Also: WTF would the US government announce that there were aliens? Why would a government, which has killed countless people over far less, allow a whisteblower, to reveal to the world, in front of Congress, information that would fundamentally alter our conception of ourselves and our place in the cosmos, of the same cultural importance as the Copernican Revolution or the theory of evolution by natural selection?

        • yastreb
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          deleted by creator

          • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I think you're correct that they might just be some relatively low tech for the alien species in question. Maybe they're lost. The issue here is that we're lost now in a world of pure possibility. Based on what we're being told now however their function seems unclear but they seem to have intelligence and seem to be doing reconnaissance? Maybe that still effect on how advanced this (relatively non-advanced) tech is, that for them its like cluster munitions are for us is like Neon Genesis Evangelion. An actually interesting philosophical problem is raises is what the criteria and conditions are for identifying the type of behaviour that other life forms are engaging in. Like we feel confident with other terrestrial animals (perhaps frequently incorrectly) when we judge the intentions or functions of their behaviour, even when they are very different to us. Once we are considering off-world beings with different biological histories (even assuming they likely evolved through natural selection) then the question becomes trickier. Maybe they achieved communism and once a society takes control of itself in this way and plans its own evolutionary trajectory, and natural selection is no longer the main driving factor, then perhaps the behaviour of the organism becomes less and less predictable, based on our knowledge of terrestrial life forms.

            Perhaps their level of development means that their behaviour is so different we do not really have a reasoable way to do this. This seems to me the main argument against my point that it seems unlikely that all these reports and crashes would be genuine, but again that seems to involve more unfounded speculation.

            And maybe they don't care if we know they are here, but that strikes me as strange. Maybe their sense of ethics (or lack thereof) means that a notion like the moral quandary of intervening in the history and development of another species doesn't strike them as a problem. Who knows.

            Again I'd like to be a Posadist and believe that the Vulcans are coming to save us and bring us fully automated luxury space communism. Or maybe it's an experiment. Maybe it's a test. Maybe they are treating us as a social experiment the way we treat rats and insect and microorganisms in petri dishes.

        • space_comrade [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          It is literally beyond our capacity to understand how that is technically feasible.

          ...

          I'm just personally not at all convinced that such a mind-bogglingly advanced species would allow itself that amount error on missions where it would crash or allow itself to be studied that often.

          So which one is it then? You're saying it's pointless to speculate and then you go ahead and speculate.

          Also: why is it only Americans who seem to be claiming all this shit?

          It's not, there have been cases all over the world.

          I'm not 100% convinced of anything but just outright dismissing it all doesn't seem wise to me. I guess we'll see soon enough if this keeps on rolling. I don't get why people feel the need to have strong rigid opinions on this, it's fine to just not know and be intrigued.

          • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            It's not speculation. I think its just empirical reasoning. I'm also intrigued. Alien life intrigues me beyond anything also, except maybe superintelligent AI and communism. But my conclusions have to be based on all the empirical info I have available, including about the general nature of technology and the social context in which this is happening. It's not like this is Arrival and we're seeing the ships arrive. It's literally just the US government allowing (for God-knows-what-reason) an (never really ex) spook to go before the world and say aliens exist and that they're crashed here multiple times with tech. Also, while UFOs are 'spotted' all over the world, its overwhelmingly westerns, and especially Americans, who claim the vast majority of sightings (which is very suspicious already). If someone says that this is because other people report it less, that might be true, but not only do I doubt it, but that is really arguing from a negative, so speculating.

            You think I'm contradicting myself when I'm not. Read those two sentences again. Just because I encounter technology that is beyond my capacity (not in principle but concretely or practically, due to lack of theoretical understanding) to understand how it works, that doesn't in any way get in the way of the general reasoning I can make about technology in general; more particular, that the complexity of technology, which relies in an important way on theoretical understanding such as quantum theory in modern tech, should lead to higher levels of functioning. Also there's the social context: an alien species is sending pilots across the galaxy to...who knows? And then they are going to risk showing themselves? Why do this? If they could hide themselves getting here, they could observe us from a distance. Indeed if they're here, they can obviously do so if they can systematically come here at will. Why come near and crash? I'm really just making a basic point that the level of technological development has relations to how efficiently the tech functions on an average attempt. That's completely independent of whether or not we as a species can understand their tech. It's more advanced than ours, and that implies certain things about its functioning. This is not speculation because its based on a general observation about tech. The efficiency and high-level functioning with low-failure rates of more advanced technology, compared to more rudimentary technologies, is a function of the fact that we have more fine-tuned the tech. Consider how computaional and other tech is used to keep time far mor exactly than a mechanical clock.

            Yeah I'm also not 100% convinced of anything either but that's just a straw man. I can still reflect on what it more likely or less likely given the hard evidence we have. Until public proof definitiveely shows that we're not alone, and that extremely advanced aliens travelled here, then I'm going to doubt that they are that intelligent yet stupid enough to repeatedly manage to crash with ways to stop us noticing or getting the tech. Of course, maybe their society, values and behaviour are radically different, maybe not. But if so, I have less evidence for that and, if I were to accept they were here, then I'd have to note that they are similar to us in that they may tech and explore stuff. Perhaps they are so radically different a form of life than they don't have the same kind of minds of intelligence as us, and have different ways of being curious, but that seems to me the only way to support your argument that we should be equally confident of each possibility is more speculative.

            I far more strongly believe that if we encounter alien life then it will be a far more dramatic, history-altering moment in human history. I think it would be a far more revelatory and mind-bending experience that the US gov being like 'yeh we robbed flying saucers'. Call me cynical but I agree that this is probably a means to justify greater military expenditure. Don't get me wrong, no beef obvs, I hope you're right and I'm wrong. I hope they are out their, maybe against my better judgement.

  • autism_2 [it/its]
    ·
    1 year ago

    aliens are real and they invited me into their globlycule

  • RION [she/her]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I know it's gotta be fake but like could you fuckin imagine

  • Fuckass
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

  • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Hypothesis: Physics isn't universally consistent and there are bubbles outside of our visual range where conditions make advanced tech like FTL travel possible. Alien explorers keep coming here because they've been able to detect life (or the conditions for life) but as soon as they cross the border into our space their technology stops working, they crash, and they can't phone home. The U.S. scoops up their advanced tech and is unable to do anything with it, and covers it up to hide their embarrassment. Eventually the aliens will catch on that this is basically the universe's Bermuda triangle and stop coming.

  • CommCat [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    so where is my anti-gravity hoverboard? If an alien race were able to traverse the magnitude of space, and the US reverse engineered their tech, why are their VTOL (vertical take off and landing) planes still very clumsy?

  • happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=916subGeTFY

    A livestream of the hearing that I'm just now starting. I'm at least agnostic toward the claims because he has something to lose. Even if it's something a crank would say he's not a basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist who believed Obama was running secret Walmart concentration camps. It's someone who's built a real career and has/had the respect of others in that field where any loss of trust torpedoes your reputation/access. It's also a felony to perjure himself after voluntarily doing this. To me that seems like taking a big personal risk. Maybe it's for a LARP but it's also the kind of person I'd expect to be a whistleblower if this were a real disclosure. The videos from the Nimitz/Roosevelt are interesting enough that I'm going to at least remain open to the possibility it's real until there's strong evidence he's just grifting in a way that would also potentially destroy his life and the lives of those who've endorsed him.

    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      The perjury thing would be more compelling if the senate ever did anything about people perjuring themselves in hearings, but they don't really do that. If this guy's whole deal is just regular ol' intelligence agencies fluffing up conspiracies to keep the cranks going, I doubt the senate is going to suddenly dust off their "actually doing shit about perjury" hats and mess with the CIA or whoever.

      • happybadger [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        There are a few people like Harvey Matusow, an anti-communist snitch in the 1950s red scare who was convicted for naming a couple hundred bullshit communists in a congressional testimony. The thing that gives me any value here is that it's humiliating to the politicians who've supported him if it turns out this is a completely empty LARP. Even if I don't like most/any of them they're people who face re-election as a crank.

        Psyop is also plausible but there's so much general background confirmation from different parts of the state that I just see that being overly complex, like when people say 9/11 was some kind of government conspiracy instead of an accident. If the feds instead prosecuted him immediately it'd be de facto confirmation of at least some part of his story and that story is really incriminating for them. I see that being a huge Streisand effect while him testifying can be brushed off for the reasons listed in this thread.

        • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          If I were in charge of the aliens-having government agency, I'd have any legit whistleblowers arrested and they would be charged for something other than whistleblowing, like taking bribes from chinese or russian officials. When the whistleblowers tried to make a stink about aliens, I'd make sure whatever press secretary discusses it does so through a barely-contained grin with a little bit of laughter, and they'd say these kooks are trying to avoid the consequences for their actions by dragging in a media circus. I would then crack a beer with Klaatu and catch up on the latest reality TV from Betelgeuse 3.

          • happybadger [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Sure but Al Capone was arrested for tax evasion. Everyone knows he was really arrested for running a mafia family. With any kind of retribution against him, even the vague kind he's alleging, to me that's pointing in the direction of there being something there which is worth investigating. They can try to Julian Assange him or Chelsea Manning him but that's only going to put people on his side. The only thing the government has to gain materially from his claims is increased aerospace funding, but the core of his claims is that the military has lied and hid things from congress that they demanded oversight of a decade ago. The same people who'd be benefiting from the psyop are the people who'd potentially be prosecuted if the hearings lead to investigations and there's any kind of truth to it. If there isn't any truth to it, he knows what happened to all three of those people and is inviting that on himself for a grift.

            The way the pentagon has been mostly silent toward it has been intriguing to me. They aren't really doing anything to combat the claims which might backfire on them and open themselves up to more scrutiny. I don't properly know what to make of that response.

            • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              As much as I would love it to be true, none of this ever stands up to a smell test for me. Are the aliens only ever crashing on US territory? Why aren't other governments talking about this thing? Why is every other "whistleblower" really obviously a kook trying to make a buck or get some notoriety and fame?

              • happybadger [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                I mean what would people do if suddenly we found out China has a weapon that powerful? It'd be like when the Soviets built their own atom bomb, a hysteria which sets them up for a real war. At the same time if any other country were to unilaterally announce that they've just reverse-engineered alien technology they'd be a global pariah. As long as those programmes are secret, and they'd all be at similarly high classification levels as the most secret shit in that country, it's a weapon that could be the secret death blow in a real war. We wouldn't have had to deploy it in recent low-grade wars for the same reason we don't use nuclear weapons or F-35s. There's no strategic or tactical gain while huge drawbacks exist.

                Presumably they'd be crashing elsewhere if they're crashing at all, but how many of those places have such meticulous radar coverage from multiple agencies? American airspace is really heavily monitored in a way that'd be expensive for poorer countries to maintain. Similarly powerful ones all have a reason to keep that technology in reserve since they don't face the existential threat that countries like Libya/Iran/North Korea do.

                • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Well, I think assuming that there would be weapon technology is a bit of a leap, to be honest. I think that most of this alien stuff requires that kind of leap to an assumption, which is why I'm skeptical. Regarding crashes, I'm not sure that radar is necessary to find them, unless they're simply invisible to the naked eye. If crashes are happening, someone would have come across one outside of the US somewhere. I'm also not sure what would cause a nation to become a pariah if they disclosed the existence of aliens. I would assume they would become quite important globally, and their access to alien technology, beings, or artifacts would be highly sought after by other nations.

                  • happybadger [he/him]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    Not even weapon tech but any kind of alien tech. If we found alien cupholders the polymers in them would probably advance us by centuries and give a military a massive edge. But that edge is only public when it's necessary to use it in a public way and when the benefits to that outweigh the drawbacks. We didn't immediately disclose the Manhattan Project because it'd turbocharge Nazi/Japanese/Soviet development of the same weapons while drawing massive backlash for developing something so much more powerful than anyone else could field.

                    The radar is important because that's tracking them as they fly. 2/3rds of the world is water and it's the US which monitors massive areas like Oceania. Geographically the US is a huge space under one authority, with Texas being twice the size of Germany. If any country had advance warning of a crash site it'd probably be the US and it's the fourth-largest country on the planet with the most extensive Navy and Air Force. I'd expect them to recover it in the same way I'd expect a disclosure to be a lone whistleblower like this instead of the feds spontaneously calling a press conference that will upset the entire course of history and geopolitical order.

                    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      But again, if they really have it and it's so critically important to keep its existence hidden, why is this guy walking around? It just doesn't make any sense. He could have had a car accident or a heart attack, the kooks would say kooky things and the mainstream would treat it like any other conspiracy theory and it would be forgotten except by paranormal websites and ufologists within six months.

                      • happybadger [he/him]
                        ·
                        1 year ago

                        He essentially has a dead man's switch by only having secondary information. Everyone is expecting something to happen to him from the Great Satan. The moment it does, it's going to cause a public and political outcry- especially now that he's almost a household name and the public seems generally positive about him. That could potentially piss off the people he's relaying information from, unrelated people who've seen the same things, or other second-hand whistleblowers. It would provide them a safer environment to give the same testimony and that extra confirmation would hurt the people who had him killed. The time to have assassinated him was the second before he blew the whistle but he isn't directly connected to those programmes so they probably couldn't have anticipated him being a leaker. Once the cat's out of the bag it seems like a much messier decision to me. I don't think they could contain that. He also seems to have a solid background for trustworthiness so I think character assassination would go over as well as actual assassination, and what media has covered him has done so positively.

                        • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
                          ·
                          1 year ago

                          Well, thus far he's provided nothing more than his own testimony. If there ever turns out to be evidence I'll be amazed and quite excited, but thus far I haven't seen anything that makes me think he's got more than a fanciful story to tell.

                          • happybadger [he/him]
                            ·
                            1 year ago

                            The lack of evidence is where I support the house's investigation. If there is something there, there's evidence to find. If there isn't, the one response the pentagon has been consistent with is stonewalling attempts at congress looking into it for some other reason. I want strong civilian oversight over every aspect of military research so we don't learn about the next atom bomb with the next Hiroshima. Anything black budget should be open to some kind of external scrutiny and any serious investigation into this guy's claims will at least expose something else they're doing with a blank cheque.

            • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              With any kind of retribution against him, even the vague kind he's alleging, to me that's pointing in the direction of there being something there which is worth investigating. They can try to Julian Assange him or Chelsea Manning him but that's only going to put people on his side.

              Except they have a history of brutally cracking down on real leaks, even fake bait leaks they dumped through a patsy themselves, and they have the entire oligarch-owned propaganda machine under their thumb. All they'd have to do is lock him up, call him a crank, and the entire propaganda machine would repeat that.

              The way the pentagon has been mostly silent toward it has been intriguing to me.

              "UFO" conspiracies literally started as an air force psyop that they've been making a show of "no we don't know anything about that wink wink nudge nudge"ing ever since. Not issuing more than a "yeah no that's not real" statement is normal for them.

          • happybadger [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            When it comes to re-election sure. If your choice is between the-republican and the-republican but the-republican 1 has a bunch of attack ads calling him a batshit conspiracy kook, who do you vote for in the primary? the-republican 2 represents the same policies and doesn't have hours of recordings of him spending taxpayer money to chase little green men that some discredited intelligence guy tried to get a movie deal with. Ted Cruz could get by with humiliation because he was Trump's biggest sycophant alongside Lindsey Graham and Matt Gaetz. They're still riding the MAGA wave.

  • Tachanka [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction distraction

    anything but deal with capitalism and climate change. LITERALLY ANYTHING