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> "Let me be clear: UAP are real," he writes. "Advanced technologies not made by our Government — or any other government — are monitoring sensitive military in

> "Let me be clear: UAP are real," he writes. "Advanced technologies not made by our Government — or any other government — are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe That's very specific: not made by any government. We know it's not aliens. It's never aliens. So, it's some sort of private party, probably a company.

belter 2y ago
Sure...totally real: https://xkcd.com/2572/ https://xkcd.com/2572/
Atotalnoob 2y ago
I don’t believe in aliens (fermi paradox) but I doubt it’s a company. If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government? They could set their price and immediately become world renowned. Unless you are saying that there is a shadowy secret organization that controls the world with space lasers and UAPs….
- widowlark 2y ago
  >Unless you are saying that there is a shadowy secret organization that controls the world with space lasers and UAPs Would that not be a government by definition?
  - Gud 2y ago
    Depends on how you would define "controls the world". Technically, I control the world (but only a tiny small speck of it).
- nobody9999 2y ago
  >Unless you are saying that there is a shadowy secret organization that controls the world with space lasers and UAPs…. As you return home, henchman grab you, blindfold you and take you to my secret lair, then bind you to a table with a laser mounted on the ceiling pointed at the table. I walk up to the table and power on the laser and its beam slowly moves toward you between your legs. Me: "You figured it out. SPECTRE rules the world with UAPs and space lasers!! And that's unfortunate for you." I start to walk away... You struggle with the bonds confining you to the table, to no avail. And with just a hint of panic in your voice: You: "Do you expect me to talk?" I laugh and say: Me: "No Atotalnoob. I expect you to die." With apologies to Ian Fleming[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_(film) Edit: Fixed typo and formatting.
  - Atotalnoob 2y ago
    I haven’t seen goldfinger, so thank you for the link, otherwise I would be very confused
    - nobody9999 2y ago
      >I haven’t seen goldfinger, so thank you for the link, otherwise I would be very confused You should. It's fun. And Sean Connery (IMNSHO) was the best Bond.
      - Atotalnoob 2y ago
        I don’t watch Sean Connery movies. He hits women.
        nobody9999 2y ago
        >He hits women. That'd be a neat trick, given that he's been dead for four years. Does he jump out of his grave to do that?
        LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
        He's just been brainwashed by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz to do that, though... Ze Peniz iz Bäd! Ze Gun iz Good!
- alganet 2y ago
  You're assuming the tech is some kind of ex-machina, something incredible (btw I'm not). In your scenario, I could ask the same: Why does the company need the government for then? Would you sell your time machine to the US or use it? I think it's something trivial, probably boring, yet locked in some sort of confidential arrangement. I think we're on a scenario that the public should know something, but we can't know what UAPs are, and these two conditions are deadlocked.
- throwup238 2y ago
  > If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government? They could play countries off each other to gain soft power over policy that affects other investments, ones easier to leverage that selling weapons. “That’s a nice military you got there, it’d be a shame if China/Taiwan/Israel/Iran/NK/Russia/USA had this one weird trick to obsolete it.” It’d be even more impactful if it changed the nuclear MAD game, because the company could hide behind the risk of escalation. Don’t sell to any one nuclear power so that the others don’t immediately start nuclear war to preempt the new technology. This is all ridiculously speculative but if humans managed to make a flying craft as fast and maneuverable as UFO witnesses say they are, missile defense and the end of MAD is my first thought.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government? Hedge fund stock market bullshit. You know, the kind that has people track movements of various CEOs, or buy aerial/satellite images of parking lots, and stuff. That would be my main guess. As for "monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe" specifically, I'd look at PMCs and data brokers, but there's probably many more scenarios I'm failing to imagine right now. EDIT: Also, to channel my inner Matt Levine: securities fraud?
- bitcharmer 2y ago
  [dead]
mrguyorama 2y ago
Or.... Someone is lying People have lied to congress a good bit in the past. It's safe to do if it's even a little difficult to prove. That doesn't even count the times people lied to whoever is doing the testifying, such that they aren't knowingly lying to congress.
- alganet 2y ago
  The weird phrasing "not made by any government" makes me think exactly the opposite. Whoever said it is probably being vague enough to tell the truth, we just don't know exactly what that truth means.
  - saaaaaam 2y ago
    As I said further up, governments don’t make things: they get other people to make things for them. “Not made by any government” is not a lie when you’re a lawyer.
ericb 2y ago
> It's never aliens. Why? Shouldn't probes be here by now? There are 200 sextillion stars in the observable universe. We know of one civilization--ours, and it immediately began sending probes once capable. If Von Neumann self-replicating probes are possible, doesn't that solve both distance/speed of light/time scale objection and imply probes should be here by now? The sending civilization may not even still exist, but their probes would.
- knowitnone 2y ago
  Why not? Yes, we did send out probes...and where are we with them? "If Von Neumann self-replicating probes are possible" That's a big if. Where is proof of these probes that you speak of?
  - nadermx 2y ago
    Thats also assuming Von Neumann probes don't replicate wrong like DNA as it clones, etc. Too many variables for it too be feasible
    - alganet 2y ago
      Why do you assume DNA replication is "wrong"? Maybe it's just part of the exploring. It needs to adapt to new environments to explore them after all.
    - ericb 2y ago
      If I could attach a software program to every replicating chunk of DNA, I'm pretty sure I could write a checksum and diagnostic and instructions to shut down if they failed. That's not a variable that does anything to feasibility.
      - krapp 2y ago
        What would this "software program" be made of? Millions of years of evolution have already granted DNA the capacity for diagnostics, error correction and self-repair. Despite that, genetic replication is still error prone, and everything still fails, sometimes catastrophically. DNA is made of molecular bonds, and that "software" is necessarily also made of molecular bonds, there is no distinction between "software" and "hardware" at that level of physical granularity. You're not going to get perfect replication of anything over millions of generations. That violates the laws of thermodynamics. The system has to change, randomly and unexpectedly, and it has to fail over time. Entropy must accumulate. And that's not even taking into account the radioactive hellscape of interstellar space. This is the difference between mathematics and physics. Mathematicians can handwave away or ignore inconvenient or uninteresting complexities, and thus something like the infinite exponential progress of self-replicating probes across the galaxy seems obvious because the math is obvious, but reality doesn't allow that.
saaaaaam 2y ago
Governments don’t make things. They sign the contracts and pay the money for other people - non-governmental people - to make things.
distracted_boy 2y ago
Then this company must have existed in early 1900s as well as several hundreds of years ago.
krapp 2y ago
Or maybe Lue Elizondo doesn't actually know the top secret state of the art of technology made by every government in the world, and he's just talking out of his ass because he's a con man and a fraud, and currently trying to sell a book. The man tried to pass off a picture of a chandelier as a UFO. He claims he fought terrorists using astral projection. He's connected to the bullshit circus that is Skinwalker Ranch. He's not credible. This is always the game with these people. Everyone's talking about Corbell's "jellyfish UAP" video - which is obviously just bird shit on the lens - and how there's a second video showing it leaping in and out of the water that definitely exists but of course that the public can never see. It's always allegations, claims, speculations, and rare circumstantial evidence that nine times out of ten turns out to be bunk. What has David Grusch actually revealed, other than a rehash of existing UFO folklore, and things he's been told by other people? It's all smoke and mirrors and people keep falling for it because of media hype, their inherent mistrust in government, and because they want to believe. If there is something at the center of this - I promise you, I guarantee you the people talking about aliens and "NHIs" and interdimensional beings don't know anything about it.
- alganet 2y ago
  It is obviously smoke and mirrors for the real thing, demons. (Whenever you tell something is smoke and mirrors, it is very likely people will imagine something even more fantastical).
  - krapp 2y ago
    There are people who do believe UFOs a really demons in disguise. Supposedly a lot of them are Evangelical Christians in high places in the US intelligence and military hierarchy, and one of the reasons for secrecy about UAPs/UFOs is that they don't want to risk calling up or empowering some existential demonic force by calling attention to it. I don't know how true the latter part of that is (the former is definitely true) but people like that aren't going to be disabused from their beliefs regardless of the criticism, it's religion at that point. All I'm saying is if people want this to be taken seriously, and approached credibly, they need to stop taking the word of people like Lue Elizondo uncritically. We don't know that any of these people actually know anything about anything. We do know they can't or won't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. We also know the proof they do provide, when they choose to provide it, is often unreliable, circumstantial or outright fraud. That should be more of a red flag for people than it seems to be.

belter 2y ago

Sure...totally real: https://xkcd.com/2572/ https://xkcd.com/2572/

Atotalnoob 2y ago

I don’t believe in aliens (fermi paradox) but I doubt it’s a company. If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government? They could set their price and immediately become world renowned. Unless you are saying that there is a shadowy secret organization that controls the world with space lasers and UAPs….

widowlark 2y ago
>Unless you are saying that there is a shadowy secret organization that controls the world with space lasers and UAPs Would that not be a government by definition?
- Gud 2y ago
  Depends on how you would define "controls the world". Technically, I control the world (but only a tiny small speck of it).
nobody9999 2y ago
>Unless you are saying that there is a shadowy secret organization that controls the world with space lasers and UAPs…. As you return home, henchman grab you, blindfold you and take you to my secret lair, then bind you to a table with a laser mounted on the ceiling pointed at the table. I walk up to the table and power on the laser and its beam slowly moves toward you between your legs. Me: "You figured it out. SPECTRE rules the world with UAPs and space lasers!! And that's unfortunate for you." I start to walk away... You struggle with the bonds confining you to the table, to no avail. And with just a hint of panic in your voice: You: "Do you expect me to talk?" I laugh and say: Me: "No Atotalnoob. I expect you to die." With apologies to Ian Fleming[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_(film) Edit: Fixed typo and formatting.
- Atotalnoob 2y ago
  I haven’t seen goldfinger, so thank you for the link, otherwise I would be very confused
  - nobody9999 2y ago
    >I haven’t seen goldfinger, so thank you for the link, otherwise I would be very confused You should. It's fun. And Sean Connery (IMNSHO) was the best Bond.
    - Atotalnoob 2y ago
      I don’t watch Sean Connery movies. He hits women.
      - nobody9999 2y ago
        >He hits women. That'd be a neat trick, given that he's been dead for four years. Does he jump out of his grave to do that?
      - LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
        He's just been brainwashed by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz to do that, though... Ze Peniz iz Bäd! Ze Gun iz Good!
alganet 2y ago
You're assuming the tech is some kind of ex-machina, something incredible (btw I'm not). In your scenario, I could ask the same: Why does the company need the government for then? Would you sell your time machine to the US or use it? I think it's something trivial, probably boring, yet locked in some sort of confidential arrangement. I think we're on a scenario that the public should know something, but we can't know what UAPs are, and these two conditions are deadlocked.
throwup238 2y ago
> If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government? They could play countries off each other to gain soft power over policy that affects other investments, ones easier to leverage that selling weapons. “That’s a nice military you got there, it’d be a shame if China/Taiwan/Israel/Iran/NK/Russia/USA had this one weird trick to obsolete it.” It’d be even more impactful if it changed the nuclear MAD game, because the company could hide behind the risk of escalation. Don’t sell to any one nuclear power so that the others don’t immediately start nuclear war to preempt the new technology. This is all ridiculously speculative but if humans managed to make a flying craft as fast and maneuverable as UFO witnesses say they are, missile defense and the end of MAD is my first thought.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> If a private company could make these kinds of things, what benefit would they get by not selling it to a government? Hedge fund stock market bullshit. You know, the kind that has people track movements of various CEOs, or buy aerial/satellite images of parking lots, and stuff. That would be my main guess. As for "monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe" specifically, I'd look at PMCs and data brokers, but there's probably many more scenarios I'm failing to imagine right now. EDIT: Also, to channel my inner Matt Levine: securities fraud?
bitcharmer 2y ago
[dead]

mrguyorama 2y ago

Or.... Someone is lying People have lied to congress a good bit in the past. It's safe to do if it's even a little difficult to prove. That doesn't even count the times people lied to whoever is doing the testifying, such that they aren't knowingly lying to congress.

alganet 2y ago
The weird phrasing "not made by any government" makes me think exactly the opposite. Whoever said it is probably being vague enough to tell the truth, we just don't know exactly what that truth means.
- saaaaaam 2y ago
  As I said further up, governments don’t make things: they get other people to make things for them. “Not made by any government” is not a lie when you’re a lawyer.

ericb 2y ago

> It's never aliens. Why? Shouldn't probes be here by now? There are 200 sextillion stars in the observable universe. We know of one civilization--ours, and it immediately began sending probes once capable. If Von Neumann self-replicating probes are possible, doesn't that solve both distance/speed of light/time scale objection and imply probes should be here by now? The sending civilization may not even still exist, but their probes would.

knowitnone 2y ago
Why not? Yes, we did send out probes...and where are we with them? "If Von Neumann self-replicating probes are possible" That's a big if. Where is proof of these probes that you speak of?
- nadermx 2y ago
  Thats also assuming Von Neumann probes don't replicate wrong like DNA as it clones, etc. Too many variables for it too be feasible
  - alganet 2y ago
    Why do you assume DNA replication is "wrong"? Maybe it's just part of the exploring. It needs to adapt to new environments to explore them after all.
  - ericb 2y ago
    If I could attach a software program to every replicating chunk of DNA, I'm pretty sure I could write a checksum and diagnostic and instructions to shut down if they failed. That's not a variable that does anything to feasibility.
    - krapp 2y ago
      What would this "software program" be made of? Millions of years of evolution have already granted DNA the capacity for diagnostics, error correction and self-repair. Despite that, genetic replication is still error prone, and everything still fails, sometimes catastrophically. DNA is made of molecular bonds, and that "software" is necessarily also made of molecular bonds, there is no distinction between "software" and "hardware" at that level of physical granularity. You're not going to get perfect replication of anything over millions of generations. That violates the laws of thermodynamics. The system has to change, randomly and unexpectedly, and it has to fail over time. Entropy must accumulate. And that's not even taking into account the radioactive hellscape of interstellar space. This is the difference between mathematics and physics. Mathematicians can handwave away or ignore inconvenient or uninteresting complexities, and thus something like the infinite exponential progress of self-replicating probes across the galaxy seems obvious because the math is obvious, but reality doesn't allow that.

saaaaaam 2y ago

Governments don’t make things. They sign the contracts and pay the money for other people - non-governmental people - to make things.

distracted_boy 2y ago

Then this company must have existed in early 1900s as well as several hundreds of years ago.

krapp 2y ago

Or maybe Lue Elizondo doesn't actually know the top secret state of the art of technology made by every government in the world, and he's just talking out of his ass because he's a con man and a fraud, and currently trying to sell a book. The man tried to pass off a picture of a chandelier as a UFO. He claims he fought terrorists using astral projection. He's connected to the bullshit circus that is Skinwalker Ranch. He's not credible. This is always the game with these people. Everyone's talking about Corbell's "jellyfish UAP" video - which is obviously just bird shit on the lens - and how there's a second video showing it leaping in and out of the water that definitely exists but of course that the public can never see. It's always allegations, claims, speculations, and rare circumstantial evidence that nine times out of ten turns out to be bunk. What has David Grusch actually revealed, other than a rehash of existing UFO folklore, and things he's been told by other people? It's all smoke and mirrors and people keep falling for it because of media hype, their inherent mistrust in government, and because they want to believe. If there is something at the center of this - I promise you, I guarantee you the people talking about aliens and "NHIs" and interdimensional beings don't know anything about it.

alganet 2y ago
It is obviously smoke and mirrors for the real thing, demons. (Whenever you tell something is smoke and mirrors, it is very likely people will imagine something even more fantastical).
- krapp 2y ago
  There are people who do believe UFOs a really demons in disguise. Supposedly a lot of them are Evangelical Christians in high places in the US intelligence and military hierarchy, and one of the reasons for secrecy about UAPs/UFOs is that they don't want to risk calling up or empowering some existential demonic force by calling attention to it. I don't know how true the latter part of that is (the former is definitely true) but people like that aren't going to be disabused from their beliefs regardless of the criticism, it's religion at that point. All I'm saying is if people want this to be taken seriously, and approached credibly, they need to stop taking the word of people like Lue Elizondo uncritically. We don't know that any of these people actually know anything about anything. We do know they can't or won't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. We also know the proof they do provide, when they choose to provide it, is often unreliable, circumstantial or outright fraud. That should be more of a red flag for people than it seems to be.