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US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs
- tedunangst 3y agoI don't need to believe in UFOs to believe the government would spend tons of money trying to retrieve one.
- HideousKojima 3y agoYou should believe in UFOs, they're definitely real. I see them every few days, I simply look up in the sky and see something that I can't identify.
- earthboundkid 3y agothose are birds
- complianceowl 3y agoYour comment is both hilarious and so true.
- wcarss 3y agoI think that's the story here -- congress is trying to fix some serious corruption. Replace UFOs with magic beans and it sounds like some folks in government seem to have been swindled into diverting money through multiple paths into "classified work" chasing after Jack and a giant stalk. That sounds like a potentially fantastic grift for whoever is running it. This is why the bill says: no more money for anything related to these crazy beans, and anyone who is employed looking for them is freed from any bonds of secrecy to come tell us what's been being done. Of course there's a tiny tiny possibility someone comes back with a giant's ring, so they include that you've got to show everything you actually found, but that provision also will make it clear later that despite a lot of money, no one has actually found anything meaningful, and thus the whole thing was a fraud.
- brookst 3y agoThis would be a stronger theory if the UFO triggers in congress weren’t also the most credulous / disingenuous believers in numerous other conspiracy theories, and only slightly further behind in their advocacy for corruption. Maybe there is fraud and the wrong people are getting rich from it?
- jeremyjh 3y agoThese people are at odds with the military industrial complex.
- brookst 3y agoMarco Rubio? The same Marco Rubio whose own website[1] says: > he’s secured funding and supported programmatic changes that have seen continued growth in Florida’s defense industrial base > Since 2011, Rubio has secured more than $2 billion in military construction in the state. > In 2021, Rubio’s many years of supporting the F-35 program reaped additional rewards in the Panhandle when the Air Force announced that Eglin Air Force Base would receive a second F-35A Squadron That Marco Rubio is at odds with the military industrial complex? 1. https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/fighting-for-florida-accomplishments https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/fighting-for-f...
- SheinhardtWigCo 3y agoIf that were the case, wouldn't the "Sense of Congress" be that UAP programs are hiding corruption and fraud, rather than "to integrate any recovered exotic technology into the nation’s broader industrial base"?
- hnboredhn 3y agoI am surprised by how little takes on this seem to address the fact this is likely to be bureaucratic. There are many people or departments who would benefit from increased fundings in these areas. Not seven saying its overt corruption. But if you work for the military in collecting sightings on unidentified objects and earnestly dont know what 10% of the sightings actually were, it behooves you to fan the rumors on it a bit.
- api 3y agoI have heard these types of claims many times. The people making them seem more credible at first glance this time, but I am firmly in the camp of being deeply skeptical until I see concrete proof presented. That being said, I don’t completely discount the possibility. One answer to the Fermi paradox is that there isn’t one, and I can think of many reasons multiple governments would try to keep stuff like this secret.
- gremlinsinc 3y agoThe thing that bothers me is they supposedly have 12 or more craft that have crashed. Aliens have super sophisticated tech that is hardy enough to travel millions of light years through space but it crashes so easy on earth? What caused them to crash? I'd like to believe, and I think 1 or 2 might be reasonable but the claim is 12, which doesn't account for ships obtained by other nations as Grusch said I'd happening. I still believe it's possible, and hope it is, however something feels staged about this, maybe to get more money for certain agencies, or some other motive.
- sidfthec 3y ago> Aliens have super sophisticated tech that is hardy enough to travel millions of light years through space but it crashes so easy on earth? Selection bias. We don't know how many crafts fail to make it to Earth. Maybe the trip is extremely dangerous and only a percentage actually make it. And/or, like most air & space travel, takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts. Also, we have a very good handle on air travel, but planes still crash sometimes. (I don't actually believe we have ET crafts coming to earth, but it's fun thinking it through).
- whinenot 3y ago> What caused them to crash? Because nobody has figured out an autopilot that doesn't shit the bed once in a while? I'm betting on taking a nap in the backseat is just a universally bad idea when nobody is driving.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Aliens have super sophisticated tech that is hardy enough to travel millions of light years through space but it crashes so easy on earth? What caused them to crash? Multiple different sets of aliens, fighting over Earth. (I’m not saying that this is true, just that it is one scenario that explains crashes happening if there were aliens as described building craft capable of visiting Earth.)
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoThis sounds more like the discovery of a money pit than anything extraterrestrial.
- zadler 3y agoIt’s how the pentagon will pass its first audit.
- infamouscow 3y agoWe'll sooner see it disbanded and replaced than pass an audit.
- kwertyoowiyop 3y agoStill looking for evidence. Any evidence at all. Anyone? Bueller?
- davisr 3y agohttps://archive.org/details/ufos-are-real-1979 https://archive.org/details/ufos-are-real-1979
- Simulacra 3y agoWhat I find most fascinating about aliens and UFOs is that they always seem to be heading for America. If a UFO arrived from another galaxy it might choose any place to land, but talk is always America-centric. Do other countries feel so UFO special?
- madspindel 3y agoGhost rockets in Sweden, 1946? The country with the best fishing nets would probably catch more fish than countries with bad fishing nets, even if they have the same amount of fish in the oceans.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoThe US may have the best electronic "nets". Other places have a lot more eyeballs per square mile/km, though.
- kodah 3y agoAmerica is hardly special in their belief in UFOs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightin... Generally UFO reportings increased with astronomy, radar, and surveillance technology development. Of which, the US has a lot of all three, which probably means we have a sufficiently complex system that we can notice anomalies but not sufficiently complex enough to identify them. You could've googled this theory you had before putting it in text.
- bbor 3y agoThey did end their comment with a question mark - no need to get snippy :)
- kodah 3y agoI've come across a number of low effort commentary recently that's easily googlable where folks themselves are inappropriate. In this case, there's amerocentricism heavily implied when that's obviously not the case. I think maybe what this suggests is that HN really isn't the place for me at the moment.
- qwertyuiop_ 3y ago“Hey look over there”. Nothing but politics of distraction from grave corruption.
- conception 3y agoThere sure is a lot of UFO talk around the same time audio of a former president laughing about all the treason he’s committing. Probably just a coincidence.
- waihtis 3y agoAs a non-American, let me ask you if you really think all the other high level American politicians are clean? If not, would you be better positioned to scrutinize the current political system as inherently flawed instead of barking at current political candidate X or Y?
- bbor 3y agoUhhhh not OP but yes I believe only one president has shown off classified material for money and power and ego. Disliking the system doesn’t mean we should abandon all critiques of politicians while we wait for our personal utopia to come about.
- 7thaccount 3y agoThat's a good point other than the fact that it sounds like you're saying he doesn't need to be held accountable in a court of law for his numerous crimes. No politician should be exempt from the law.
- waihtis 3y agoNo, actually I want more accountability as ultimately the money politicians launder into their own pockets directly or indirectly comes from a power vested by citizens. Useful idiots who point fingers at one edge of the political spectrum are smokescreening the bigger issue.
- 7thaccount 3y agoI don't think it's an either or thing. Both situations are bad. We should both hold Trump accountable AND push against corruptions by all politicians. If Hunter Biden was influence peddling (no idea if he was)...that's a problem too and so is whatever I assume Jared and Ivanka were doing for 4 years (e.g. the $2B Jared reportedly got from Saudi Arabia). I do agree that some of the culture war is likely manufactured to prevent a concentrated movement against a system that overly caters to the ultra wealthy.
- DrThunder 3y agoIf you believe the government is capable of covering this up for decades then you must also believe they're just as capable of lying about UFO's existing for some other reason. I heard some guy saying they were actually demons, which I found quite funny/entertaining. Supposedly these aliens smell like sulfur badly. Maybe aliens/demons are the same thing? I guess we're gonna need the Doom Slayer.
- curtis3389 3y agoI gotta re-read Childhood's End, just in case they also have horns.
- alephnerd 3y agoShor's stone! So the Plane of Oblivion does exist.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoThat sounds like a reference to Childhood's End: https://www.syfy.com/videos/childhoods-end https://www.syfy.com/videos/childhoods-end
- waihtis 3y agoReligion was born based on primitive humans observing aliens, which were interpreted as "angels" and "demons". It's as good of an explanation as any. Either way, we will need to make great technological leaps to develop proper demonslaying equipment.
- optimalsolver 3y agoI too am a fan of the Stargate franchise.
- slashdev 3y agoHonestly I don’t think the government is sufficiently competent to cover up something as big as intelligent aliens arriving on earth. That’s the most exciting news ever. There’s just no way in my mind they could keep that quiet successfully.
- pixel3234 3y agoAnything to distract public from important things! Last week it was sub, now UFO. Did anyone even noticed Watergate^2?
- eganist 3y ago> Watergate^2 Oceangate? Yeah it was front page for a week.
- trdtaylor1 3y agoNo, the original poster is referencing, rightly or wrongly, the Hunter Biden receiving millions without seemingly performing work for a foreign national individual, then threatening the individual with retribution from both him and (potentially) his dad sitting next to him.
- eganist 3y agoNo, I gathered. I was doing water/ocean wordplay to deflect from unnecessary politics lol
- pohl 3y agoReally? Not the fake elector scheme? Or the attempt to overturn the results of the last election? Or the willful retention of classified documents and the attempts to evade returning them? Any one of those would be better candidates for watergate-squared.
- bbor 3y agoWhat scandal are you referring to…?
- shiftpgdn 3y agoThe president's son allegedly committed quite a few crimes, including offering access to his father (The US President) for money. He has been charged for some of these crimes recently.
- stuckinhell 3y agoI believe in aliens/ufos/"something else out there" thanks to Graham Hancock's interesting book Visionary. Do I trust the government to tell me the truth about them at a time where institutional trust is at all time low? No freaking way.
- himinlomax 3y agoHancock is clearly a kook.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoI'm surprised you're getting down-voted for this. His history of making wild claims and then accusing the archeology community of being against him speaks for itself.
- himinlomax 3y agoSome people just want to believe.
- Stranger43 3y agoI am wondering how much of this is fueled by the change in the word alien from simply meaning foreign to meaning extraterrestrial and people misreading the former for the latter. The research into foreign weapon technology is in one of those gray areas where not only does some of those activities border really close to industrial espionage against companies in potentially allied countries, or might contradict stated US State Department positions on international law it's usually classified and spoken off in hushed tones It's very likely that an alien(as in foreign) technology evaluation program exists without there being anything extra-terrestrial about it as legalese can trail popular changes to terms by several decades. And that mentions of those in wider circles might fuel some rumors and misconceptions among those "who wants to believe".
- jwestbury 3y ago"Foreign" is quite common in intelligence contexts, though, and "alien" is not.
- Stranger43 3y agoThe US immigration services uses the term Alien, and the US State Department have historically used both. Given how byzantine the US military industrial complex's paperwork and pretend regulation is someone might have been relying on legislation or paperwork predating the change in word usage, and that that influenced the naming of some program somewhere in the secretive world. It's also worth noting that such a misconception definitely benefit's the military industrial complex as it draws focus towards something that is not there rather then towards what's actually happening, which again is a very common strategy within military intelligence.
- mc32 3y agoMoreover, when it comes to corps/biz incorporation domestic is in-state, foreign is out of state, and alien is international. presumably if one day one could charter a corporation at an office on Mars it would be extraterrestrial.
- MoSattler 3y agoThe government has previously used UFOs to divert attention. > Over half of all U.F.O. reports from the late 1950's through the 1960's were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights'' over the United States, the C.I.A. study says. ''This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/03/us/cia-admits-government-lied-about-ufo-sightings.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/03/us/cia-admits-government-...
- EA-3167 3y agoThe B-21 is getting close to operational, the NGAD is in development, and god only knows what sort of experimental drone tech is being worked on in the dark. That adds up to a lot of test flights and more, and a lot of reasons to throw out the same old "UFO" chaff to cover it.
- horsawlarway 3y agoI mean... seems pretty easy to correlate previous UFO sightings with aerial vehicle testing. I'd expect basically any semi-competent government to be monitoring those reports and increasing surveillance in the area.
- uhtred 3y agoI have to say that X-44 does look similar in shape to some of the UFO pictures I've seen. Especially the one where the UFO flies past the plane window.
- Gud 3y agoWhat about the other half?
- ender341341 3y agoprobably a good number of drunks/kooks and then probably a handful of unknown phenomena that would have a reasonable explanation if we had better photos/descriptions. *edit: I don't mean to imply that anyone claiming to have seen something they couldn't identify in the sky is a kook/drunk, I do strongly believe that there are credible observations of unknown flying objects, just that they are unlikely to be alien in origin. I will say my thoughts on the matter: Are there aliens out there? near 100% chance (given the size of the universe it seems insanely unlikely we're the only planet with life) Are aliens within visiting distance of earth? pretty low chance Are aliens visiting earth mainly focused on the rural united states? near 0% chance
- rtlxcv 3y agoFor me, this article does not make Rubio's position clear. Previously, he had been involved in the UFO industrial complex: https://reason.com/2022/11/15/the-military-ufo-complex/ https://reason.com/2022/11/15/the-military-ufo-complex/ I'm surprised that congress finally wants to stop the gravy train, unless this is another refined misdirection scheme. Probably a lot of that money went into covert operations.
- taraharris 3y agoIf they're lying, they have a moral obligation to declassify everything they know. If they're telling the truth, they have a moral obligation to declassify everything they know. Official secrecy is fundamentally incompatible with the needs of an informed public capable of voting intelligently within a democratic republic.
- eganist 3y agoSo are hostile countries using declassified nuclear blueprints to bomb our homeland. Alas, if you want the democratic experiment to succeed, you need to account for those who stand to lose everything from your success.
- taraharris 3y agoOfficial secrecy clearly failed to stop the very scenario you're talking about! We have had nuclear secrecy for nearly 80 years. In that time, nuclear weapons have proliferated to nine countries. North Korea has them, for God's sake. Nuclear weapons are simply a function of having a large enough industrial base to support their development. The "secret sauce" is officially secret, but it isn't actually secret.
- eganist 3y ago> We have had nuclear secrecy for nearly 80 years. In that time, nuclear weapons have proliferated to nine countries. North Korea has them, for God's sake Nine countries as opposed to...
- kasey_junk 3y agoIt’s not secrecy that has prevented proliferation, it’s carrots and sticks that has. Treaties, sanctions etc. Not to mention the cost of a nuclear program.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
- nimbius 3y agoSo to temper expectations, the article only cites Republican Marco Rubio has having any real inquisitive drive to unearth clandestine UFO knowledge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy Chances are excellent Rubio might be doing this to try and draw attention away from several state supreme court rulings striking down bans on transgender care and drag shows incepted and championed by republicans. If not that, then to draw attention away from the spectacle of republican cooperation during successful debt ceiling negotiations.
- DrThunder 3y ago[flagged]
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Chances are excellent Rubio might be doing this to try and draw attention away from several state supreme court rulings striking down bans on transgender care and drag shows incepted and championed by republicans. Mostly, those have been federal trial courts (and some, like the Florida drag ban one, also preliminary injunctions preventing enforcement while the case proceeds, not final rulings striking them down) not state supreme courts issuing the rulings.
- ancientworldnow 3y agoSenator Gillibrand (D) has been working on this with as much interest and conviction as Rubio for several years now.
- TechBro8615 3y agoRubio is a member of the "gang of eight" which means he's about as uniparty as they come - the letters next to the names of people on that committee do not mean anything. Their allegiance is to the military industrial complex. They've all got the stamp of approval of the US intel community, which has probably been spying on them and blackmailing them since they launched their first political campaigns.
- haswell 3y agoI’m not saying that I buy into these narratives, but in the interest of curiosity and for sake of argument… Let’s say that there are real ET craft, and let’s say that the US government has indeed been retrieving and studying them for decades. If such analysis unlocks technology breakthroughs of the kind that would solve say, energy problems, the government now has the problem of sitting on secrets that it has no legal pathway to introduce to the public, and no way to explain without somehow coming clean. If any of this is real, the kind of legislation described in the article seems like one of the few ways they can start to introduce this information to the public. This makes it sound like they know what this is and they need to establish the channels and narratives to discuss it publicly (even if “this” is all a cover for misuse of funds that has nothing to do with ET craft). Everyone is focused on “what is this distracting us from?”, and maybe that’s all that this is, but even if this is misdirection, there’s something going on that’s making elected officials and reputable military types speak publicly about UAPs. That by itself is a pretty interesting signal if nothing else. It could also all be bullshit, and either way, I’m pretty curious to see where this goes.
- justinclift 3y ago> no legal pathway to introduce to the public So, DARPA doesn't exist, and it can't put out calls for things it'd like developed in certain areas? /s I mean, it doesn't really take much thinking at all to figure out ways to introduce "future generation" technology that's not going to raise many eyebrows.
- haswell 3y agoI think that would all depend on how advanced this hypothetical tech is, and the timeframe in which someone wants it known to the public. DARPA may not provide enough cover for sufficiently advanced discoveries that cannot be explained without raising bigger questions. It could also be a misinformation campaign meant for adversaries to make it appear that these hypothetical discoveries are backed by a source that may potentially yield more. Beyond this, perhaps we now have evidence that adversaries reverse engineering the same tech are ahead of us, and enlisting the broader scientific community is now the primary goal. And again, I’m not saying these are likely explanations. But in the unlikely event that we’re really talking about alien tech, they seem plausible.
- rekttrader 3y agoFAA tells you to report UFOs to BAASS a private company.
- tzs 3y agoOne theory that would explain this pretty much perfectly is that Marco Rubio is an alien operating here under cover to get the government to stop trying to reverse engineer some technology that his people accidentally lost here. I always thought there was something a bit off about Rubio...
- petesergeant 3y agoHe's not the only one... https://www.tedcruzforhumanpresident.com/ https://www.tedcruzforhumanpresident.com/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ydnaclementine 3y agoI believe in UFOs, because a UFO is believing in me somewhere out there
- gregw134 3y agoThese "UFOs" are in my opinion probably new type of drone. Video of "UFO" over Poland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WZN0T_54xY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WZN0T_54xY Pentagon video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Wmap12xm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Wmap12xm0 Picture of crashed orb in Mexico: https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmm7a/mysterious-metallic-orb-falls-on-mexico-may-contain-valuable-information-meteorologist-says https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmm7a/mysterious-metallic-o... My theory is that these spheres are spinning and move using the Magnus effect (the effect that causes a spinning soccer ball to curve). Theoretically, if you have gyroscopes inside the sphere, and you can find a way to transfer the gyroscopes' spin to the sphere, the sphere will spin in a controllable direction and move where you want it to. Lift can be achieved by filling it with helium.
- dvh 3y agoI have counter theory. It's a balloon.
- gregw134 3y agoThe videos show the spheres moving quickly, often back and forth. Pilots have reported spheres hovering stationary over a spot during hurricane level winds. From all the reports it sounds like there is some kind of propulsion mechanism.
- shawabawa3 3y agoWind?
- nickelcitymario 3y agoWhile I understand and appreciate the aspects of the bill that offers protection for whistleblowers, I don't understand cutting all funding for reversing such technology. If it exists, don't we want to understand it ASAP? Regardless of whether it's alien in origin or not, why in the world wouldn't we want to study potentially advanced technology?
- thatguy0900 3y agoI would assume the issue would be that a government agency is reversing UFO tech and congress doesn't know about it, not just that it's being done. A government agency going rogue in such a manner would be a big concern
- Sunspark 3y agoAgreed. Many implications. If technology is reverse-engineered in secret while government funded and then patented to a private corporation, is this not theft from the people if they try to sell it for profit? Security threats are a concern as well, civilians are not allowed to possess weaponry more powerful than what the military has, etc.
- cubefox 3y agoWhat does it mean to "reverse" UFO tech?
- thatguy0900 3y agoReverse engineering a UFO would be disassembling and studying it so that we can recreate it or repurpose the technologies in it. Presumably it would have some manner of exotic engine or power source or perhaps weapons, etc.
- HideousKojima 3y agoFor an example of this from the early Cold War, see the Tupolev Tu-4. The Soviets took the wrecks of three downed US B-29s from WWII and spent huge amounts of money and manpower studying them and developing copies of them since US strategic bomber tech was so far ahead of their own. Supposedly (though I'd need to find a source again) there was a bullet hole in the wing of one of the recovered B-29s that the Soviets faithfully recreated in the Tu-4 thinking it was part of the actual design. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4
- narrator 3y agoThis is a good thread to catalog red herring techniques. * The government has previously used X to divert attention therefore there is no X. * The person saying X is an accomplice of X and cannot be trusted. * Demanding the answer to the question about X is dangerous because national security. * X is a distraction from something bad Trump did. * X is a distraction from something bad Biden did. * X is a distraction from the recent Supreme Court decisions. * X could never be covered up by the government - refuses to believe copious whistleblower testimony about X with no reason than it's impossible for the government to be able to cover X up.
- srge 3y ago- it was swamp gas - it was a reflection in the windshield - I debunked it from seeing this YouTube video because those Air Force pilots and those government whistleblowers definitely don’t know what they are talking about ! I am always surprised by the amount of confidence those « debunkers » radiate when what they mainly do is just express doubt with zero cost to them in terms of reputation or even work.
- TechBro8615 3y agoThis is precisely why I've always been most fond of the explanation that "the UFO thing" is a training ground for US psychological warfare officers. We're target practice for US disinfo campaigns.
- mhoad 3y agoThis is such a ludicrous idea that doesn’t pass even the most basic reality checks. It’s explicitly illegal for a start amongst a whole host of other problems where the incentives make zero sense.
- TechBro8615 3y agoThe government lying to us and manipulating the population with psychological warfare is a much more germane, plausible, and historically aligned proposition than the suggestion that aliens are visiting earth. In fact if you assume aliens are visiting earth, then you must also assume the government has been lying to us about it. So either way, the government is lying. > It’s explicitly illegal Lol. When has this ever stopped any government agency, ever? The FBI conducted over a million illegal searches last year. The NSA lied for decades about its dragnet surveillance program. You think the DIA information office (Lue Elizondo's "former" workplace) is against fabricating some conspiracy theories in an effort to corral the people most susceptible to them? They could even justify it as a defensive maneuver against hostile forces who would otherwise propagandize the same people ("distract them with Lue Anon so the Russians can't target them with Q Anon").
- bsaul 3y agoThis whole narrative on UFO coming from US Gov at the exact same moment the fear around covid has faded is so suspicious.. It's really really hard not to see it as a pathetic attempt at keeping the population in a state of mass hysteria. (yes i know this sound completely paranoïd, but i have absolutely no other idea why they would do that)
- ancientworldnow 3y agoThese inquiries predate covid (UAPTF started in 2017).
- eli 3y agoSounds more nonsensical than anything. Why would "they" want to do this? Who is "they"? Marco Rubio is talking about UFOs now, but he played down covid and was against lockdowns and masking.
- bsaul 3y agoSo it's just a feeling then. Although i talked to another friend who made exactly the same observation on its own, without concerting: all of the sudden, some very official sounding declarations from US "officials" making public statement suggesting there may be something real after all about UFOs. I have no idea who "they" is, but i assume it's pretty easy for a small group of congressmen to spread rumors and declarations on a given topic in the media (from my understanding it is done regularely as a consequence of lobbyist work).
- eli 3y agoI think it's much more likely that there's nothing to this, rather than it being part of a secret ongoing conspiracy to manipulate the public.
- lend000 3y agoAll the people here claiming new types of drones and secret programs dating back decades have clearly never worked in defense. Most of the US military, the best funded in the world, is decades behind the private sector on computing technology -- it's honestly unthinkable to me that their propulsion technology would be decades (or centuries) ahead. The best engineers and scientists have taken Silicon Valley jobs paying 5-10x more since the late 90's. And why are we acting like this is a new phenomenon? It's been going on since at least the 1940's, when there should be little doubt that we didn't have technology to explain it. While I've never seen anything personally, and my anecdote is meaningless to others, I have a family story dating back to ~1969-1970 that either means a bunch of sane family members are completely nuts, or that (in their case, a classic silver "flying saucer") are real, prevalent, and not things that can be prosaically explained.
- treyfitty 3y agoThat “government employee doesn’t get paid enough to attract talent” trope has to die. I work with many government employees that are not beholden to the government pay scales and get special exemptions to be compensated “at market rates.” You’d be surprised how many tech employees inside government clear $750k
- rdtsc 3y agoThey typical pattern is they work for one of the government contractors L3 (now L3Harris), Northrop Grumman, etc. Of course it's a revolving door as well. > You’d be surprised how many tech employees inside government clear $750k That does sound a little high. But it seems you have more recent info than I do.
- lend000 3y agoYes I'm a bit skeptical of the parent's numbers, but if true, I imagine it's very much the exception, not the norm. Technical employees at the contractors did not do much better than the price ranges posted for government job boards (even distinguished/principal engineers capped out at what is probably around $300-350k today after inflation) except in management positions, in my experience. All the most talented engineers I knew were gone within a few years. Not to mention the red-taped filled work environment does not exactly encourage innovation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- UncleOxidant 3y ago> would immediately halt funding for any secret government or contractor efforts to retrieve and reverse-engineer craft of “non-earth” or “exotic” origin. If that were going on (and I'm skeptical) why would you want to stop it? > Funding would also be cut for “the development of propulsion technology, or aerospace craft that uses propulsion technology, systems, or subsystems, that is based on or derived from or inspired by inspection, analysis, or reverse engineering of recovered [UFOs] or materials.” Again, why the hell would you stop funding for development of propulsion tech that might be of alien origin? You can bet that if China or Russia had a craft like this they'd be trying to reverse engineer it.
- dragonwriter 3y agoBecause you are being paid (or blackmailed) by the aliens. Or because you don’t believe they exist, and think that “classified program to recover extraterrestrial craft and reverse engineer its technology” is used as itself a cover for outright corruption.
- throwaway743 3y agoLikely because it's been going on since at least the 40s by private defense contractors, who don't have the same oversight as a gov agency and who are benefiting from the tech with tax payer dollars without the public knowing or benefiting.
- revscat 3y agoIt would only be prohibited from receiving funding if it wasn’t reported to the relevant Congressional committees.
- fsn4dN69ey 3y agoLet's look at this as rationally as possible: People have been claiming to see UFOs for years, ever since the popularization in mass media with the start of "the war of the worlds". In nearly all cases, even (at the time) credible sightings were advanced weapons programs. Additionally, with the proliferation of everyone having access to relatively high quality cameras, the amount of "legitimate" sightings has dropped dramatically. Now, what has changed? We have several videos, that are public knowledge, that show objects moving in ways that no level of technology we have now can demonstrate. This video and the other two related are the only official videos we currently have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWLZgnmRDs4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWLZgnmRDs4 These objects were recorded as early as 2004. These objects were recorded not by a loony bin boy cried wolf UFO-ologist but by US Navy airmen. Ok, maybe they are a camera issue? e.g. one can imagine it's a bird or a balloon or an object that shows up as moving much faster than reality, or something to do with parallax/tracking error with the IR (infrared)? That would be believable, especially if it's a single recording, solo pilot, new equipment. The issue with this is that in addition to the declassified IR videos, we saw this happen multiple times, in multiple locations, on different aircraft, with multiple pilots present in the aircraft at the same time making the same visual (with eyeballs) confirmation, radar confirmation, IR. Ok, maybe it's an advanced hologram program/electronic warfare test/drill or something? Which was my next guess, but the visual confirmation rules out electronic warfare and in addition to visuals, IR, we also have radar bouncing off - not just recorded by the aircraft, but recorded by the entire USS Nimitz carrier group that was in the area at the time - hence real, physical objects. And, again, it wasn't just one signature, in fact the reason they were up there to begin with was because of the unidentified objects in the airspace. Ok, maybe it's just a balloon or an experimental drone by the US or its rivals. The issue here is that the physics described are not just "next-gen" a la F35 but some sort of groundbreaking physics that would change the way we do anything. From The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-flying-object-navy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-... "For two weeks, the operator said, the Princeton had been tracking mysterious aircraft. The objects appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, and then hurtled toward the sea, eventually stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering. Then they either dropped out of radar range or shot straight back up." Fravor reported that he saw an object, white and oval, hovering above an ocean disturbance. He estimated that the object was about 40 feet long. Fravor and another pilot, Alex Dietrich, said in an interview that a total of four people (two pilots and two weapons systems officers in the back seats of the two airplanes) witnessed the object for about 5 minutes. Fravor says that as he spiraled down to get closer to the object, the object ascended, mirroring the trajectory of his airplane, until the object disappeared. Hovering 50 feet above the churn was an aircraft of some kind — whitish — that was around 40 feet long and oval in shape. The craft was jumping around erratically, staying over the wave disturbance but not moving in any specific direction, Commander Fravor said. The disturbance looked like frothy waves and foam, as if the water were boiling. Fravor began a circular descent to get a closer look, but as he got nearer the object began ascending toward him. It was almost as if it were coming to meet him halfway, he said. Fravor abandoned his slow circular descent and headed straight for the object. But then the object peeled away. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he said in the interview. He was, he said, “pretty weirded out.” The two fighter jets then conferred with the operations officer on the Princeton and were told to head to a rendezvous point 60 miles away, called the cap point, in aviation parlance. They were en route and closing in when the Princeton radioed again. Radar had again picked up the strange aircraft. “Sir, you won’t believe it,” the radio operator said, “but that thing is at your cap point.” “We were at least 40 miles away, and in less than a minute this thing was already at our cap point,” Commander Fravor, who has since retired from the Navy, said in the interview. Thus, they are able to move on their own, not just floating in the wind (balloon, birds, launched radar reflectors), they're quite large, and can move large distances in short amounts of time. Additionally, no exhaust ports, no exhaust fumes, no control surfaces of any kind were observed. If we actually break down and analyze the movement based on the recording, we get results that are beyond physics. From the University of Albany - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7514271/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7514271/ Even the most conservative and minimum models for acceleration give us ~70g with maneuverability, which is more than double what we have, and only in a rocket-like manner. Not without exhaust, control surfaces, and non-linear movement. "It is difficult to draw any definitive conclusions at this point regarding the nature and origin of these UAVs other than the fact that we have shown that these objects cannot be of any known aircraft or missiles using current technology. We have characterized the accelerations of several UAVs and have demonstrated that if they are craft then they are indeed anomalous, displaying technical capabilities far exceeding those of our fastest aircraft and spacecraft." Ok, maybe it's a secret weapons program we don't know about. The issue with this is that we'd see a ton of people "disappearing" from public life and essentially vanishing, similar to what happened during the Manhattan Project. Physicists, mathematicians, materials scientists would seemingly end their career, stop publishing, and go off the grid to live and work at some facility. Currently, we haven't seen an exodus/brain drain of any level in the fields we would expect towards "nothing" - if anything, everyone's going into finance and adtech. Not to mention, this kind of stuff would be "Theory of Relativity" tier, not just cutting edge stealth tech. The only other thing I can imagine is that it's a coordinated government attempt to spread disinformation regarding our military capabilities to our adversaries. Even then, it doesn't explain what the objects were. I really really don't want to be a "UFO guy" but maybe even this mindset is part of the problem. Given all of this information, I don't understand why so many are so quick to dismiss any sort of theory, because as far as I see it anything terrestrial is exponentially more likely than aliens, but I can't come up with any ideas for these objects to have originated on Earth. PS. there's also the the whistleblower which the article references: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/ex-intel-official-government-hiding-alien-tech.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/ex-intel-official-go... and a 2017 NYT article describing the program itself: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-prog...
- 1970-01-01 3y agoAnd there is still no physical evidence of them. These UFOs must be made of pure dark matter.
- simmanian 3y agoI like to entertain myself with the idea that perhaps what's driving the recent spotlight on UFOs is not that we are seeing/detecting them, but that we are detecting more and more of them. Maybe governments around the world have always known about objects flying/floating around. And that was fine because there are many natural causes that could explain these blips on radar. Many weather phenomena or man made objects could explain people "seeing" UFOs. Buzz Aldrin famously saw glowing objects flying around in space but he does not necessarily believe they have ET origin. But recently, there's simply way more of these objects everywhere, and nobody knows for sure what these are. This worries some people because, well, what if they're Chinese spy balloons or drones? Remember when the US military shot down a couple balloons some time ago and it made the news? This is a potential threat to the national security and it makes sense that they have put together teams for the retrieval of these objects. The government may not believe they have ET origin, but they now see them more as potential threat to the national security. Of course, I would definitely find it enjoyable and exciting if there is some "otherworldly" intelligence behind these objects.
- joshuahedlund 3y agoAll entertaining to speculate, but it's classic human-centered thinking to suppose that aliens would be regularly appearing a few thousand feet or so from us, but never ever anywhere in the rest of the billions of miles of our solar system and everywhere else in between here and wherever they came from (in addition to their conveniently never appearing within clear view of regular citizens' phones or cameras and never clearly interacting with our physical world in any way)
- prirun 3y ago> but never ever anywhere in the rest of the billions of miles of our solar system and everywhere else in between here and wherever they came from How would you or anyone else know this?
- joshuahedlund 3y agoNo one has a monopoly on the sky. Amateur astronomers track active satellite missions, discover asteroids, mine public sky survey data to analyze stars, etc, etc. If there was anything out of the ordinary on the visible spectrum regularly showing up in our solar system (especially if it involved a lot of beelining towards Earth), it couldn't be hidden.
- theptip 3y agoThis is a push from Congress to force programs into the open that are secretly capturing Russian/Chinese UAVs right? Folks on the committees are angry that China is trolling US Navy vessels with UAVs and this isn’t being publicized. The “non-earth” origin is the smokescreen, “exotic” covers foreign secret research projects? Something a bit convoluted like this is orders of magnitude more probable in my world model. (Basically, the prior “aliens exist and have been covered up” rounds to zero, so given we are observing this public action, even extremely unlikely explanations could explain it.)
- jrumbut 3y agoI'd like to point out a couple of things. One is that, while this is written like a straight news article (until the last paragraph), this is in The Hill's Opinion section. In the past, I have seen this publication allow people of questionable credibility to post in their Opinion section. I have no idea who this writer is, but they are not a news reporter (or they weren't acting as one when they wrote this piece). The second is that the bill appears to be about Congress' authority to control funding and perform oversight. They are withdrawing funds from secret UFO projects and asking those involved to come forward, either with the greatest discovery in human history or (more likely) with a story about money being misappropriated and that misappropriation being hidden from the US Senate.
- gpm 3y agoIt seems like all the author has written about in the past 10 months (at least that muckrack knows about) is UFOs https://muckrack.com/marik-von-rennenkampff/articles https://muckrack.com/marik-von-rennenkampff/articles
- heavyset_go 3y agoUFO narratives are convenient distractions from meaningful politics. IMO, what you're seeing is a legislative effort to avoid doing the jobs they were elected to do while appearing bipartisan and proactive.
- themagician 3y ago
- throwaway743 3y agoNews Nation follow up on Rubio interview with Ross Coulthart. Discussion of implications. https://youtu.be/4uY62OmDfLg https://youtu.be/4uY62OmDfLg
- jl6 3y agoStill seems most likely this is a bunch of people feeding off each others’ hype and speculation. There are a dozen explanations more plausible than aliens.
- bamfly 3y ago"It's aliens" is just about the least plausible explanation other than "god did it". I'm pretty sure several other sci-fi bullshit explanations are more likely than "aliens are real, have tech we couldn't dream of that relies on our model of reality being totally broken, give enough of a shit about us to visit but not enough to do anything else, and are extremely hard to detect except, for no good reason, in this one specific way that, coincidentally, often turns out to for-sure not be space aliens, but one of several other things".
- TechBro8615 3y agoI'd even argue that "breakaway human civilization living in underground bunkers on Earth" is more plausible than aliens, just because of the vast travel time required to move between star systems within the currently known laws of physics. Both situations - aliens and breakaway civilizations - are incredibly unlikely bordering on impossible. But at least one of them doesn't require breaking any laws of physics.
- baja_blast 3y agoWarp drives and wormholes do not necessarily break the laws of physics. Sabine Hossenfelder does a good job explaining why the limits imposed by special relativity are not valid arguments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-jIplX6Wjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-jIplX6Wjw As for a breakaway civilization, don't you think people would notice resources missing or the insane usage of resources by what would have to be a massive civilization be noticed? If you take the claims at face value, that these things operate as if inertia does not apply already "breaks physics". And if that is the case ET would make more sense than mole people. But it is also possible there is nothing to this at all. For me it's ET or a Psyop.
- 3y ago
- markus_zhang 3y agoMy concern is that such research may fall into private funding, i.e. completely dark to citizens.
- tptacek 3y agoEzra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-leslie-kean.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of things like psychic teleportation. Another is a Stanford biologist who started producing debunked materials science papers about allegedly alien artifacts (that turn out to look a lot like ordinary machine parts). No source she names has firsthand knowledge of "non-human origin" technology; it's all people who heard something who heard something. At one point she cites the now-discredited "Gimball Video". There's no good answer to the question of "if Grusch is right about any of this, why did the DoD allow him to say it publicly" --- she has a particularly harebrained theory that DoD classification rules allow Grusch to describe this stuff in generalities as long as he doesn't cross a line of specificity, which, just, no. But people love talking about this stuff, so you can't blame Rubio for indulging it.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> But people love talking about this stuff, so you can't blame Rubio for indulging it The conclusion here does not follow the premise.
- godelski 3y ago> The conclusion here does not follow the premise. Why? Are you saying politicians don't like pageantry? Or are you saying that specifically Rubio is more about pragmatism and uniquely not part of the Kabuki theater?
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Are you saying politicians don't like pageantry? No, I am saying that their indulging in it, regardless of whether it is feeding into something popular in some segment is not, simply because of that popularity, beyond reproach. > Or are you saying that specifically Rubio is more about pragmatism and uniquely not part of the Kabuki theater? Oh, hell, no!
- shadowgovt 3y agoIn terms of using support by Senators to influence one's priors on whether UFOs might be real: it's worth noting that Senator Rubio also harbors doubts about the certification of the election results in 2020. One might wonder "Why is this Congress treating this topic seriously when previous Congresses did not" and conclude this Congress is more willing to treat outlandish claims as credible, not that the claims are more credible.
- vanillax 3y agoWhat ever China has, is because it stole it from US public/private companies. So if China is trolling us, its with our own tech. This puts US in a equally worse spot. Share that you have secret high tech items, at the expense of admitting CCP agents also brought it back home...
- WalterBright 3y agoI'd rather Congress indulged in this fantasy than the fantasy budgets Biden gets passed.
- RadixDLT 3y agoAliens watching the US Congress like... 'Wow, even we didn't think they'd go this far with the cover-ups!'
- at_a_remove 3y agoI like to consider just listing as many alternatives as I could manage, in order of decreasing likelihood (as per my personal estimation): 1) Some kind of psy-ops from within our own government, meant to mess with a different government or a branch of our own government. Maybe its own citizens. You can get eleven-dimensional chess with this pretty quickly. 2) We have grabbed someone else's UAVs. Maybe China, maybe Russia. 3) We have grabbed the UAVs of an unsuspected party which a surprise technological edge we would never expect: the Wakanda Hypothesis. We don't even know that we're in a game and that we're losing. ... N-3) Aliens have emerged from local gas giants and are curious about us. Jupiter? Saturn? Neptune? And so on. Probably not Pluto. N-2) Generation ships or "sleepers" from another solar system are on some sort of grand tour of the Orion Arm, working their way out. We've been noticed and the occupants awakened. Aliens? AI? Maybe there is no difference by then. N-1) Aliens within a light sphere about 0.45 * (First UFO Year - 1895) heard our radio and really hustled to get here with a hefty blueshift. N) The captured vessels are either FTL-capable or brought here on a larger ship with such capabilities. All bets are off. There is another possibility which I think is often ignored, after #3. It's sci-fi, but it isn't physics-breaking the way FTL is. What if the craft are from a parallel earth? I dislike it, but not as much as I dislike FTL. It doesn't even require aliens. A parallel history where we got the ball rolling even a few decades earlier might end up with a civilization a hundred or a thousand years ahead of ours. I wouldn't bet money on anything higher than #2 on my list, but I still think that if we are going to conjecture about aliens, we might as well do parallel Earths, too.
- drumhead 3y agoIts gone past the point where people can just brush it off as the rantings of a crank. Congress are troubled about it. If there are organisations gathering alien tech without oversite and covertly, then imagine what they could do with it if they managed to activate or replicate it? They could sell it to enemies, use it for themselves, subvert governments. Congress have probably concluded that as well and are rightly alarmed.
- wnevets 3y agoConspiracy theories have gone completely off the rails in this country. For the longest time I thought flat earthers were trolling like the birds aren't real meme but seeing this crap reach congress is sad.
- booleandilemma 3y agoIs there anyone else that just doesn't believe any of this ufo stuff whatsoever? The whole thing seems like a massive waste of time and resources when we have real problems that need solving. Where is the evidence of any of this stuff?
- dhosek 3y agoWell these are people who also firmly believe in nonsense conspiracy theories pushed by some nutjob on the internet, so this just seems completely in line with their lack of connection to reality.
- 93po 3y agoI find it pretty wild that members of congress are having to draft bills to pull out any secrets that may be happening in government programs so secret that even they don't know about it. It speaks very loudly to how little accountability there is to where tax payer dollars are going.
- teachrdan 3y agoIs it? We have over 500 members of congress -- do we want all of them to have access to any secrets they want?
- 93po 3y agoYes, how else are they supposed to make informed voting choices? It's literally their job to have access to secrets so they can represent the public at large that can't.
- einpoklum 3y agoCall me when we other countries supposedly find such UFOs.
- golem14 3y agoThis seems to be a great opportunity to recommend the short story “on patrol” by Stanislaw Lem [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Pirx_the_Pilot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Pirx_the_Pilot
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoI just realized why this is bullshit. If such crafts existed, they wouldn't only seem to appear in the USA, and somebody in some backwater somewhere on earth would have leaked proof about them by now. But there's never clear pictures or videos or physical evidence provided. This is just another scam.
- Etheryte 3y agoMost UFO movies take place in the US, ergo most UFOs must be visiting the US. (/s)
- nameforuser 3y agoIf you are interested in learning more about the history of UAPs and claims of NHI abductions I suggest checking out the YT channel Eyes on Cinema. Some of the hypnosis recall videos on there are terrifying. https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnCinema https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnCinema "Barney Hill's highly disturbing hypnosis session regarding his alien abduction experience in 1961" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0er29WQITo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0er29WQITo I also see a lot of interesting stuff on https://twitter.com/richgel999 https://twitter.com/richgel999 He might even be on HN! Additionally listen to some of the interviews with Professor Garry Nolan. There is a lot of nonsense and grifters in the UFO world, how do you know this or that isn't a disinformation campaign? It's hard to know what is genuine and who is just trying to sell their book or promote their podcast. Garry Nolan once said something like UFOlogy is not a science and to seriously study the UAP phenomenon it would need to become a serious field of scientific investigation i.e. creating a journal scientists can submit papers to for peer review. I would avoid people like Steven Greer or the History Channel's Ancient Aliens. I have always been a "show me the evidence" type person. I was an atheist since I was really young. I hope this comment helps anyone who is curious about learning about this subject. I'm not trying to convince you aliens are coming to Earth or "make you a believer".
- alex_young 3y agoThis is an opinion post, not news. Here is the author's twitter feed. Looks to have a serious fixation on UFOs dating back a long time: https://twitter.com/MvonRen/ https://twitter.com/MvonRen/
- tabtab 3y agoSend the nuttiest of politicians to investigate, it keeps them distracted from important stuff. (If they are ET, Congress will miss them anyhow.)
- i-use-nixos-btw 3y agoI don’t believe such projects actually exist, and my two theories are a bit whacky, but one of: 1. They’re actually used as ways of laundering money out of government pockets without congressional oversight. The whole “oh but it’s top top secret” excuse is an easy one. 2. The positive and negative attention are all part of a plan to convince enemy nations that the US has access to incredible technology. I mean, if I wanted to spook Putin, I’d probably also sign a bill condemning the work on the trillion megaton nuclear bomb. What trillion megaton nuclear bomb? The one we’re condemning! But let’s pretend it is real. What is the point of congress withdrawing such funding? Elon steps in, and then such tech is in the hands of a private company rather than the government. How is that a good thing for the US govt? It sounds (to my naive British mind, which knows very little about congress or its stance on various things) that it’d have been preferable to give a timeline for these projects to present themselves to congress. Immediately condemning them and convincing whistleblowers to present them instead just seems like a backwards way of doing it.
- dopa42365 3y agofriendly reminder to take your meds
- sacnoradhq 3y agoWhile I may navigate a Willie Nelson-approvable nudist hippie Magic Mystery Machine, I'd prefer to inform these politicians to please fuck right off with the X-Files conspiracy theories. Even with the most wacky and fanciful personalities not totally fried by acid and weed, selling this disinformation with the transparent prospect of personal enrichment through books, paid speaking junkets, pressers, merchandizing, and other content products would be an insulting, disrespectful farce and abuse of office. I would recommend voters consider firing such grifting fools (including Rubio, Santos, Manchin, and Sinema) out of office because at least prostitutes provide an essential and honest service. A child could pick higher integrity, more informed, and less corrupt COTUS candidates by (random, unvetted) sortition of Baltimore city employees. This sort of institutional corruption unfortunately signals drift towards systemic empire decline and effective collapse long prognosticated (20+ years ago) by great philosophical historians such as Chalmers Johnson. When too many of the soldiers and police officers say "Fuck this bullshit, I'll be a farmer with fixed fortifications in a remote area on my own." that previous age has sailed and the Vikings and Conquistadors aren't far behind.
- m3kw9 3y agoReally hope they produce something other than blurry videos with 8bit shadows(tall green man), blurry standard disc looking flying object, again on 70s vhs quality, and “riveting” interviews of space alien tech recoveries. It’s been a clown show so far this century.
- waffletower 3y agoI think it is possible that politicians are using this issue to get screen time, regardless of the veracity of UFO claims.
- johnea 3y agoWell, if Marco Rubio said it, it MUST be True!!! Like Chinese bioweapons spreading worldwide and the Cheeto having his election "stolen". He's a real fact checker that guy... (of course, if you want to consider naturally spreading infections, the flu has been an annual chinese bioweapon for hiundreds of years)
- nashashmi 3y agoI have reason to believe many of these UFO movement claims. What makes this possible is closely related to the results of supercooling helium to zero degrees. Figure out why the latter happens and you will figure out how the UFOs can move around so quickly.
- skc 3y agoThese "UFOs" always crash land around the USA. Kind of curious.