The title is edited to be more clickbait than the actual article title.
I also find it amusing that Russia, China, EU and the US fought wars, proxies, engage in espionage and were very close to global nuclear war on a few occasions. But they always have the unwavering commitment to hide any evidence about aliens /s. Among generations and different leaderships without doubt.
What surprises me is that how, in a social media-driven world starved for original content, that countries whose cybersecurity policy is a chicken wire fence can keep such massive programs secret.
I figured the model was that they're all keeping it secret for competitive reasons, especially if they're all trying to derive tech from it. Maybe if you admit aliens are real, the public demands you show off the resulting new toys, and the skunkworks types don't like that. Especially if they're not actually ready.
After all, people believe China and the Soviet Union colluded with the USA during deepest Cold War to hide evidence that the Moon landings were fake. It actually makes more sense if you believe that aliens must be part of that deal somehow.
Everything is aliens, except hiding the aliens which is just Deep State and Trump+Musk can solve it tomorrow.
If you start with an assumption that "alien threat comes above all else" then I can imagine building a conspiracy case on top of that with governments that hate each other but hold hands when it comes to hiding/countering that threat.
Like any other argument or reasoning, it's as strong as its weakest link, or the foundation it's built on.
As a Swede, I have pondered over something similar. Nobody I have ever met have been in USA. It's obviously a satire made up by illuminati to enrage the masses while they dismantle the welfare system /s
a POSIWID view of this is that these "government reveals UAP secrets" stories always seems like a way to issue an interrupt and neutralize volatility in another mainstream story by redirecting attention to it. it's a popular distraction tactic with a lever attached to it. a hearing like this only takes a few days to a couple of weeks to schedule and arrange, and time spent mulling the story is time not spent on the present issues. UAPs aren't secret, it's a managed narrative.
we don't need official disclosures to have serious conversations about consequences, meaning, and what we can learn from the fact of being observed. the best are probably already elaborated in fiction, notably in the star trek franchise regarding the species wide and civilizational reorientation impacts of first contact.
if anything, the need for these performative hearings indicates how far off human civilization is from an official first contact, (I would estimate at least another century or more) because they exist to nudge a very long tail of people who are psychologically and culturally unprepared for it. by unprepared, I mean their strategy for negotiating in the world will revert to a zero sum material nihilism, like that of an animal or less than human, instead of elevate their perspective to an infinite sum openness to the possibilities of a nagivable universe.
In the same way that viruses can randomly embed themselves into human DNA, memes can randomly embed themselves into our social DNA. This is a prime example.
Doesn't work because memes don't have their own locomotion. Meme distribution and embed is not random, they're consciously promoted at some point by someone.
I'm a researcher in this area if anyone wants to have a proper conversation. I'm 95% convinced that the major powers of the world have recovered crashed/landed non-human intelligence craft.
Before anyone responds to this comment, I would urge you to watch this video of Majority Leader Schumer and rising republican leader Mike Rounds giving a soliloquy on the senate floor to try to pass their UAP Disclosure Act and ask yourself - why would two senate leaders put their credibility on the line to try to pass a bill that references non-human intelligence 21 times?
> NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCE.—The term
‘‘non-human intelligence’’ means any sen-
tient intelligent non-human lifeform regard-
less of nature or ultimate origin that may be
presumed responsible for unidentified anom-
alous phenomena or of which
My guess is they found a room-temperature superconductor that can store incredible amounts of electrical energy, and the quantum drive from https://ivolimited.us/ actually works.
I'm not going to stop what I'm doing because some closed-minded person told me to.
These politicians are not experts, but the witnesses that have testified under oath are.
Lue Elizondo - GS15 officer at the DIA, who's last assignment was running Special Access Program for the National Security Council.
David Grusch - GS15 officer at NRO then NGA who handled the Presidential Daily Briefing for the NGA (meaning he was cleared to thousands of SAPs to consolidate information and brief the president)
I don't disagree that congress gets lost in conspiracy theories, but almost never do people pandering those testify under oath in public, or privately to the intelligence committees or ICIG. You should open your mind and take a deeper look than the headlines.
Nothing like wasting time and getting a nice pay check for it.
How about spending time on fixing issues that will affect US Citizens. Like funding for Social Security and Medicare ?
Oh wait, that means they will actually have to think about real world problems instead of sitting, drinking coffee and asking people dumb questions no one cares about.
The universe is 13.8 billion years old. The JWST has found galaxies formed just 400 million years after the Big Bang. It took the earth 4.6 billion years to form, and 1 billion years to create life.
Our best theory of the universe, General Relativity, has solutions that allow for faster-than-light travel via some Alcubierre type drive (some [without negative mass](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02709)), and even wormholes.
Even with newtonian mechanic style solutions, it's estimated that it would only take Von Neumann self-replicating probes about 100k years to traverse our own galaxy.
Is it really that unlikely that some non-human intelligence potentially *billions* of years more advanced than us found our planet and uses it to study us or for whatever other purposes to them? IMO no.
And if you would do any research beyond just the headlines, you might come to the realization that our probably has government has recovered crashed/landed NHI craft.
I'm happy to point you to some not-so-light reading if you want to have a real conversation about this.
A civilisation billions of years more advanced than us should surely be putting out some sort of signal, intentionally or not, that they exist, right? And yet we've never seen any kind of signal like that. Space is incomprehensibly large and empty, and while I also absolutely believe that there is some other kind of life in the universe, the fact that we've never detected any means they've probably never detected us either, so there's no reason they would be coming here
> the fact that we've never detected any means they've probably never detected us either
I do not think that your conclusion necessarily follows. They could easily be much more advanced than us, just as we are much more advanced than we were 500 years ago.
> Is it really that unlikely that some non-human intelligence potentially billions of years more advanced than us
I think there's a fine-tuning problem with that kind of argument. You have to believe all the steps that make intelligent space-faring life elsewhere come into being, and yet only one other manages to do so. If there were more than one, then it seems to me the same argument about government conspiracies would apply: every single one of them would have to work very hard to hide any evidence of their existence - not just from our mobile phones, but our most advanced telescopes.
I think if there were others close enough to matter, we'd have been colonised by an errant Von Neumann machine by now.
> You have to believe all the steps that make intelligent space-faring life elsewhere come into being
I would argue that it's very selfish thinking we would be the only intelligent life in the universe, let alone our own galaxy. If you're throwing out the entire argument based on that presumption, then this conversation is pointless.
Science is about optimism to learn what we don't know. There are things in the sky that we can't identify, as Obama has said https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1hNYs55sqs We should be open to the idea of all possibilities, rather than dousing fire on it.
> I think if there were others close enough to matter, we'd have been colonised by an errant Von Neumann machine by now.
As long as were exploring wild theories, how about this one: Aliens smarter than us have colonized earth and are manipulating our information sources so we are not aware. Further, every once in a while they "give" us discoveries to advance our technology in a controlled manner. Perhaps we're captives in what is equivalent to a zoo.
I find that more pleasant to imagine than aggressive/hostile aliens that could probably destroy our civilization in about 17 seconds, though that would have the benefit of solving all of our problems in one fell swoop.
I already thought of that one - bacteria and fungi are their compute substrate for their immaterial cities. (ref: diaspora by Greg Egan, and surface detail by Ian M. Banks).
>it seems to me the same argument about government conspiracies would apply: every single one of them would have to work very hard to hide any evidence of their existence - not just from our mobile phones, but our most advanced telescopes.
I think the mixture of loyalty and psychopathy from government employees makes a weird mind landscape for people outside these institutions. The belief "the government has secrets and is keeping them from us" cannot be easily refuted. When I was in university, I had a professor that used to make jokes about how people who think the government is spying on everyone wore tin foil hats.
I am thoroughly annoyed by the title of the article: The government hears testimonies from government employees about government work! I'm saddened that this is considered newsworthy.
I also find it amusing that Russia, China, EU and the US fought wars, proxies, engage in espionage and were very close to global nuclear war on a few occasions. But they always have the unwavering commitment to hide any evidence about aliens /s. Among generations and different leaderships without doubt.
Everything is aliens, except hiding the aliens which is just Deep State and Trump+Musk can solve it tomorrow.
Like any other argument or reasoning, it's as strong as its weakest link, or the foundation it's built on.
And until we run out of bubble gum, there is no way out of it.
we don't need official disclosures to have serious conversations about consequences, meaning, and what we can learn from the fact of being observed. the best are probably already elaborated in fiction, notably in the star trek franchise regarding the species wide and civilizational reorientation impacts of first contact.
if anything, the need for these performative hearings indicates how far off human civilization is from an official first contact, (I would estimate at least another century or more) because they exist to nudge a very long tail of people who are psychologically and culturally unprepared for it. by unprepared, I mean their strategy for negotiating in the world will revert to a zero sum material nihilism, like that of an animal or less than human, instead of elevate their perspective to an infinite sum openness to the possibilities of a nagivable universe.
> "conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation".
Was it these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen ?
Before anyone responds to this comment, I would urge you to watch this video of Majority Leader Schumer and rising republican leader Mike Rounds giving a soliloquy on the senate floor to try to pass their UAP Disclosure Act and ask yourself - why would two senate leaders put their credibility on the line to try to pass a bill that references non-human intelligence 21 times?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8a0P617nqw&t=93s
And, I would urge you to read the bill. It's one of the most comprehensive pieces of legislations that has been put out this decade https://www.congress.gov/118/crec/2024/07/11/170/115/CREC-20...
> NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCE.—The term ‘‘non-human intelligence’’ means any sen- tient intelligent non-human lifeform regard- less of nature or ultimate origin that may be presumed responsible for unidentified anom- alous phenomena or of which
My guess is they found a room-temperature superconductor that can store incredible amounts of electrical energy, and the quantum drive from https://ivolimited.us/ actually works.
Kind of a red flag already....
I'm certainly unconvinced by what "a few people say". I mean, "Extraordinary claims..." and all that — you'll have to do better than testimony.
Have you ever seen Congress debate laws around computing and the internet? Ever wondered how clueless they appear in that context?
They're lawmakers, that doesn't make them sudden experts in a wide range of fields. They are susceptible to outlandish conspiracy theories.
These politicians are not experts, but the witnesses that have testified under oath are.
Lue Elizondo - GS15 officer at the DIA, who's last assignment was running Special Access Program for the National Security Council.
David Grusch - GS15 officer at NRO then NGA who handled the Presidential Daily Briefing for the NGA (meaning he was cleared to thousands of SAPs to consolidate information and brief the president)
[Karl Nell](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-nell-98203510/details/exper...) - too many positions to list, but one of the most notable was being a senior technical advisor to the Army's future command.
I don't disagree that congress gets lost in conspiracy theories, but almost never do people pandering those testify under oath in public, or privately to the intelligence committees or ICIG. You should open your mind and take a deeper look than the headlines.
Let me remind you that many of us grew up with The X Files.
Of course we paid attention. We just seem to be less gullible.
How about spending time on fixing issues that will affect US Citizens. Like funding for Social Security and Medicare ?
Oh wait, that means they will actually have to think about real world problems instead of sitting, drinking coffee and asking people dumb questions no one cares about.
Our best theory of the universe, General Relativity, has solutions that allow for faster-than-light travel via some Alcubierre type drive (some [without negative mass](https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02709)), and even wormholes.
Even with newtonian mechanic style solutions, it's estimated that it would only take Von Neumann self-replicating probes about 100k years to traverse our own galaxy.
Is it really that unlikely that some non-human intelligence potentially *billions* of years more advanced than us found our planet and uses it to study us or for whatever other purposes to them? IMO no.
And if you would do any research beyond just the headlines, you might come to the realization that our probably has government has recovered crashed/landed NHI craft.
I'm happy to point you to some not-so-light reading if you want to have a real conversation about this.
I do not think that your conclusion necessarily follows. They could easily be much more advanced than us, just as we are much more advanced than we were 500 years ago.
I feel most intelligent people understand there's life elsewhere in the universe.
Also, people don't automatically assume said life come here and visit us all of the time just because they presumably exist.
I think there's a fine-tuning problem with that kind of argument. You have to believe all the steps that make intelligent space-faring life elsewhere come into being, and yet only one other manages to do so. If there were more than one, then it seems to me the same argument about government conspiracies would apply: every single one of them would have to work very hard to hide any evidence of their existence - not just from our mobile phones, but our most advanced telescopes.
I think if there were others close enough to matter, we'd have been colonised by an errant Von Neumann machine by now.
I would argue that it's very selfish thinking we would be the only intelligent life in the universe, let alone our own galaxy. If you're throwing out the entire argument based on that presumption, then this conversation is pointless.
Science is about optimism to learn what we don't know. There are things in the sky that we can't identify, as Obama has said https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1hNYs55sqs We should be open to the idea of all possibilities, rather than dousing fire on it.
As long as were exploring wild theories, how about this one: Aliens smarter than us have colonized earth and are manipulating our information sources so we are not aware. Further, every once in a while they "give" us discoveries to advance our technology in a controlled manner. Perhaps we're captives in what is equivalent to a zoo.
I find that more pleasant to imagine than aggressive/hostile aliens that could probably destroy our civilization in about 17 seconds, though that would have the benefit of solving all of our problems in one fell swoop.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-and-why-the-fbi-mysterio...
I have to get started with work, but I will come back and give you all the links I have once I get home to my personal laptop.
I am thoroughly annoyed by the title of the article: The government hears testimonies from government employees about government work! I'm saddened that this is considered newsworthy.