UFOs are likely either hallucinations or top secret experimental DoD projects. Some of them might also be spying devices from foreign governments like that susp

UFOs are likely either hallucinations or top secret experimental DoD projects. Some of them might also be spying devices from foreign governments like that suspected Chinese spy balloon that the government shot down earlier this year. I can't blame NASA for using the obsessions of conspiracy kooks as a rationale to push for more funding for things that would actually be worth looking into. It is also obviously worthwhile for the government to know what is flying in its airspace. I do think it's pretty much a certainty that alien life exists somewhere given how many earth-like planets exist but it clearly lacks either the technology to or the interest in contacting us. It is also plausible that faster than light travel might be flat out impossible which would make intergalactic travel more or less completely infeasible given how the nearest known galaxy is 25,000 light years away. Even light speed travel would mean over 4 years of travel just to get to Alpha Centauri (or to communicate with it) which is not feasible to maintain any kind of effective political control over colonies.[0] If extraterrestrial life has developed faster than light travel and wishes to contact us, they will contact us and we will know about it. That isn't something the government will be able to cover up. They also aren't going to be able to determine which countries are the most powerful countries before they contact us because this would not be obvious to an outside observer with no preexisting knowledge of human society. [0]: A perfect example of this being how the orders of European monarchs were routinely ignored in their American colonies when it took mere months to travel between Europe and America. A very significant portion of the abuses during colonial times happened in direct defiance of the relevant king's orders because there was virtually nothing his majesty could do to stop rogue colonial officials given the communications difficulties. Any interstellar colony would, without faster than life travel, be de facto completely independent and unaccountable to Earth. Even if there was a Hitler tier criminal running an Alpha Centauri colony who was genociding the native population and carrying out wars of aggression against other colonies, who would commit to an approximately 9 year or more round trip from Earth to defeat and arrest this criminal?