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It’s interesting to understand the motivation behind all this. Specifically: US military/intelligence/congress has historically treated UFO activity as highly

It’s interesting to understand the motivation behind all this. Specifically: US military/intelligence/congress has historically treated UFO activity as highly classified. That’s now changed. Why is that? I don’t know. One candidate explanation: 1. Historically, some amount of “UFO” activity was actually classified, known US military/Intelligence programmes. Making the information public would compromise those programmes. So, in reality, the sightings related to identifiable flying objects. Just that they were identifiable by a small number of in-the-know people. 2. Things have changed. Some other actors - let’s guess Chinese/Russian - have stepped up their own secret programmes. Those items are now legitimately “unknown” to US authorities. If you’re from the US, that’s bad. Your putative enemies have something you lack knowledge of. 3. How to respond? In a world where the sightings are your own secrets then a strategy of silence makes sense. In a world where they’re not, the game is different. In this case, you want publicity: to cast them as unknown, (a) because it creates interest (/fear) and (b) tacitly lets your enemies know that you know they’re up to something. That might be way off base. But the about-face in strategy is at least as interesting as the sightings themselves. I haven’t seen that covered elsewhere. Interested if anyone else has ideas/links.

hindsightbias 5y ago
Combine #2 and #3 and a culture of reticence amongst military and civilian aviation observers to report strange things, it makes sense to laugh less at them and be more encouraging. Those sailors and airmen are intelligence assets.
throwkeep 5y ago
That's what I'm trying to figure out too. The narrative is the biggest change so far. Low quality videos and eye witness reports aren't exactly new. Sam Harris, who I consider trustworthy, was given a heads up about what's to come: "I got contacted by somebody who gave me a heads up with respect to all of this happening and he more or less told me listen, when this other shoe drops you’re going to be in the position of having to acknowledge that all the experts are on the same page, and there’s just this blanket declaration that we’re in the presence of alien technology, and we don’t know what to make of it. So prepare your brain for that and figure out what you’re going to do." https://samharris.org/podcasts/252-alone-universe/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/252-alone-universe/
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Except that I'm not sure that there's any real mention of alien technology in the report. It's just the same old where we're seeing interesting reports about not-fully-understood optical phenomena, and people in the popular press are pattern-matching it to little green men from outer space.
  - 252452d 5y ago
    Do you think that optical phenomena show up on radar? I know what they are. They're real and they're spectacular, wait until you see one of these cylinders...
  - throwkeep 5y ago
    Not yet, that's apparently coming, assuming Sam is correct about his source being reliable. If that's the case, what we're seeing now is a slow rollout. Presumably to get the population comfortable with officials talking about UFOs, instead of jumping immediately from denial to confirming alien tech.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      That's the point, there's always been "trusted sources" from wherever claiming that exciting disclosures were just around the corner. Like I said, it's the same old. If anything, this official report is evidence to the contrary because what better place to start revealing this stuff if there was anything at all to it? But no, for the benefit of any exobiologists in the audience, it even goes out of its way to argue against the alien-origins theory for these phenomena.
      - 252452d 5y ago
        ...you continue to talk after already revealing that you don't even know the basics of the topic.
edge17 5y ago
I'm probably going to get voted down for saying it, but Fox plays a lot of UFO/Bigfoot type of stuff. Clearly it gets rating, and the previous President got a lot of his ratings from the same audience as Fox so maybe there is some strategic play towards the Fox/Trump crowd.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Now that you say it... Yeah there seems to be a lot of "Your government is lying and hiding something from you, you can't trust it!" that they can conveniently extrapolate to cover other subjects, like "election fraud", or "lab leak theory".
  - hshjtychb 5y ago
    The lab leak theory is being investigated by the Biden administration because it hasn't been able to be ruled out. Didn't you read the Vanity Fair article? You want to hear some conspiracy theories? Russian collusion was one. The teargassing of Lafayette Square "by Trump" turned out to be a total lie (an internal investigation found Trump had no knowledge of the clearing of the square) The death of Brian Sicknick on Jan 7th which was said to be due to an attack by a rioter, this claim was even repeated by House Democrats during the second impeachment, was a complete fabrication by legacy media So tell me again how Fox promotes conspiracy theories? The ones I see are the ones in the front pages of the New York Times, CNN, WaPo et al

hindsightbias 5y ago

Combine #2 and #3 and a culture of reticence amongst military and civilian aviation observers to report strange things, it makes sense to laugh less at them and be more encouraging. Those sailors and airmen are intelligence assets.

throwkeep 5y ago

That's what I'm trying to figure out too. The narrative is the biggest change so far. Low quality videos and eye witness reports aren't exactly new. Sam Harris, who I consider trustworthy, was given a heads up about what's to come: "I got contacted by somebody who gave me a heads up with respect to all of this happening and he more or less told me listen, when this other shoe drops you’re going to be in the position of having to acknowledge that all the experts are on the same page, and there’s just this blanket declaration that we’re in the presence of alien technology, and we don’t know what to make of it. So prepare your brain for that and figure out what you’re going to do." https://samharris.org/podcasts/252-alone-universe/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/252-alone-universe/

zozbot234 5y ago
Except that I'm not sure that there's any real mention of alien technology in the report. It's just the same old where we're seeing interesting reports about not-fully-understood optical phenomena, and people in the popular press are pattern-matching it to little green men from outer space.
- 252452d 5y ago
  Do you think that optical phenomena show up on radar? I know what they are. They're real and they're spectacular, wait until you see one of these cylinders...
- throwkeep 5y ago
  Not yet, that's apparently coming, assuming Sam is correct about his source being reliable. If that's the case, what we're seeing now is a slow rollout. Presumably to get the population comfortable with officials talking about UFOs, instead of jumping immediately from denial to confirming alien tech.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    That's the point, there's always been "trusted sources" from wherever claiming that exciting disclosures were just around the corner. Like I said, it's the same old. If anything, this official report is evidence to the contrary because what better place to start revealing this stuff if there was anything at all to it? But no, for the benefit of any exobiologists in the audience, it even goes out of its way to argue against the alien-origins theory for these phenomena.
    - 252452d 5y ago
      ...you continue to talk after already revealing that you don't even know the basics of the topic.

edge17 5y ago

I'm probably going to get voted down for saying it, but Fox plays a lot of UFO/Bigfoot type of stuff. Clearly it gets rating, and the previous President got a lot of his ratings from the same audience as Fox so maybe there is some strategic play towards the Fox/Trump crowd.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
Now that you say it... Yeah there seems to be a lot of "Your government is lying and hiding something from you, you can't trust it!" that they can conveniently extrapolate to cover other subjects, like "election fraud", or "lab leak theory".
- hshjtychb 5y ago
  The lab leak theory is being investigated by the Biden administration because it hasn't been able to be ruled out. Didn't you read the Vanity Fair article? You want to hear some conspiracy theories? Russian collusion was one. The teargassing of Lafayette Square "by Trump" turned out to be a total lie (an internal investigation found Trump had no knowledge of the clearing of the square) The death of Brian Sicknick on Jan 7th which was said to be due to an attack by a rioter, this claim was even repeated by House Democrats during the second impeachment, was a complete fabrication by legacy media So tell me again how Fox promotes conspiracy theories? The ones I see are the ones in the front pages of the New York Times, CNN, WaPo et al