panem et circenses
I guess this is the circus of the bread and circus
craft mac-n-cheese is probably the bread part?
A former US intelligence official turned whistleblower says the government has been secretly recovering what appear to be alien craft and technology for decades. The reason David Charles Grusch is coming forward now, according to an interview with The Debrief, is that the multiple covert unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs …
Required reading: On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs.
Basically it looks at actual attempts to cover things up (the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, NSA PRISM, etc) and derives estimates for how long it takes for a conspiracy to leak given the number of people involved. TL;DR: not very long. It supports the principle that three can keep a secret if two are dead.
I believe aliens exist, they have just never been here. Some alien species just randomly finding earth is highly unlikely. The most likely scenario would be that they detected some of our radio transmissions. The tiny little bubble around earth representing the furthest any of our radio signals could possibly have reached represents about 8e-25% of the volume of the universe. If those odds aren't bad enough you need to also factor in that these visitors would have to exist at just the right time with sufficient technology to detect the signal, figure out where it came from and then travel here.
It hasn't happened, it won't happen.
Having him turn up dead in mysterious circumstances would be the one thing that would turn some skeptics into believers, so it is the last thing a government trying to hide a secret would do. They'd just deny it and let him talk about it without providing any proof, and the only people who will believe him are the people who already believed these things before he started talking.
Now if he had managed to steal a piece of alien technology he'd have something to show off, but if there really are UFOs UAPs in the possession of the US government I guess they keep a closer tab on them than they do classified documents. And the spooks were obviously smart enough not to tell Trump about them, because he would have spilled the beans in no time during one of his rambling interviews or angry tweet storms.
"He never could get the hang of Mondays"
Me neither. Come to that, I'm not really an expert at any day of the week.
Of course, it doesn't require any cunning coverup to discredit the guy - a few respected experts explaining why he's talking bollocks and some documentation to prove it should be sufficient.
There are also a few trick cyclists on YouTube analysing his body language and drawing conclusions therefrom, though I don't know enough to say if their conclusions are credible.
I'm on the fence about it all, myself. It seems very unlikely indeed, but I suppose it's just about possible. No doubt the story will sink without trace in a day or two.
The Dark Forest response to the Fermi Paradox ("There are billions of stars, so why the galaxy so quiet?) is that it is rational for a space-faring civilisation to hide from all other civilisations, and to destroy all other (potential) civilisations without announcing itself. Within the concept is the idea that on the time scales involved, a culture that has just invented the flint hand-axe when you first observe them may have nuclear bombs a mere 100,000 years later, and god-killer death rays a million years after that - and thus be a viable existential threat to you next you meet them. So it's best to glass their planet preemptively, just to be on the safe side.
This scenario would select for civilisations that are good at hiding, and good at preemptively and destroying other civilisations.
The furthest any manmade radio signals could have possibly gone is 126 light years, and the first ones would be so faint that the receiver would have to be very sensitive, and know what they were looking at. That means a specialized exploration ship. It's more likely that alien craft would be looking for signals they normally use, and (I hope) would miss ours. Otherwise, they find us, decide that water is something they're looking for, and our oceans disappear. And while they're here, there goes all the metal, petroleum, that salt looks useful, and hey - who couldn't use a little nitrogen and oxygen, eh? And there we are, spending our last minute in agony wondering just what the hell happened?
Read the "Tales of the Galactic Midway" series... it's a very depressing series about aliens that tour Earth as sideshow freaks. One carny figures it out and threatens to blow their cover unless they take his show to space.
Moral of the series: He expects to find worlds where conflict and hate have been solved by powerful tech and effortless spaceflight, but people are selfish inconsiderate greedy egotistical bastards all over the galaxy, no matter how many arms they have or what they breathe.
Maybe a reflection of human psyche though?
If you gave us the sort of technological capability to travel between stars, etc, the first thing we would do is see if we could use it to destroy our terrestrial opponents.
Basically, if you have that capability and have not destroyed yourselves and not tried to enslave lesser developed species such as us, you are clearly a step ahead.
"Personally I'm sure alien craft exist, though I question why they would bother visiting a backwater like Earth..."
“Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.”
“Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.
“Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”
I'm glad El Reg retained the significant language: defied _immediate_ explanation. The world is full of things that defy immediate explanation, which is what science does for a living: seek explanations for things that defy explanation.
Not so keen on the claim that "non-zero" materials is somehow statistically significant, unless we have a 100% reliable testing system... perhaps with one of those infallible "computer" machines?
If, and I mean IF there are so many of these partial and intact craft, surely a civilian would find something, post it on YT IG OR TT and the world would know about it? OR are the Tech companies in on the conspiracy? Not plausible... too many loose lips. I think this guy is looking for a show on Twatter next to that guy from FOX... the guy with a last name as a first name...
I was once handed a couple of pieces of "alien" technology. Fearsome metallic purple spiky things they were. They came complete with the story of how they were obtained. Hot, moonless desert night, deserted highway, bright light in the sky, road lit up for miles, car motor stopped for no real reason, extreme silence, rush of wind, object landed a couple hundred yards off the road, you get the drill. The guy spun it out for at least nine or ten paragraphs.
Long story shorter, after the object took off again, he walked over to the landing site and found the objects. I hefted them in my hand and agreed that they didn't look or feel like any normal earthly objects, and handed them back.
To this day I wonder if he actually found the custom made titanium chainsaw felling spikes out in the desert, and if so, how they got there.
It was probably aliens wot put them there, innit.
Meanwhile, the truly grizzled among us remember the saga of Bob Lazar in Ye Olde Usenet Days.
Supposed "technician" working on secret craft powered by "element 115". (*) Turns out he was a drop-out and had a job as a janitor for a few weeks, or something along those lines.
Heck, arguably it was thanks to him (and then X-Files IIRC) that "Area 51" even trickled out to become a sort of household term. But that's hidden in the haze of many a beer since.
(*) which has since been created and has, of course, none of the characteristics to power inter-stellar craft.
"Grusch made no claims in the piece as to having actually seen UAP materials with his own eyes"
So it's yet another FoaF (Friend of a Friend) story at best, eh? He has no actual personal proof?
Funny how not a single one of the (presumably hundreds, if not thousands) of US military grunts involved in the so-called recovery operations has actually managed to "collect" a small bit of the supposed material. They can mail home spoils of war (confiscated weapons, mainly), but can't pocket a small shaving from a crashed "UFO"?
Yeah, sure, right. Pull the other one.
What do you imagine the exotic and erotic and esoteric Orient are doing with the knowledge they are gleaning from similar foreign and alien forces and sources?
Do you think they would be being graciously supplied with otherworldly forceful instructions/detailed directions on the best courses of novel 0day actions, of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) and do you then realise and accept that most likely there are surely bound to many possibilities and programs both readily available and currently silently running undetected.
Such is but one small step for a force of resourceful aliens, one giant quantum communications leap for future mankind ..... which if not embraced and made has Humanity Live Operational Virtual Environment after the fact servants and servers of Alien Interventions rather than before the fact provisional co-leaders ....... which is where you is all at these days, in these expanding virtual space places of endlessly rich, vulnerability riddled Oday exploitation.
QED
though he hasn't provided any actual alien materials
oh
to date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently
oh 2.0
What worries me is not the existence of aliens, not even that they do visit Earth or leave artifacts , but its proliferation
There must be hundreds of buzzers, high on Gargle Blasters, circling the Earth on a given moment, so that all world powers can have a god dammed "arms race" to retrieve their lots and lots of crashed remains!
Is Earth used by alien rednecks a drag race track?
...and we're treating it like a joke. I understand we have to be sceptical: the truth is, there is no "hard evidence" currently. But this is the start of something bigger, unless we shut it down in its infancy (like most of the general public are already doing, a lot of yourselves included). The fact of the matter is, this isn't just some random guy from the street - this is a man with very plausible credentials, and many years in the right fields, with various senior colleagues providing countless accounts and backing up his claims. He isn't just "telling the press", he is actually testifying and putting his whole life on the line (with the possibility of committing criminal perjury against the US government).
We need to try and keep an open mind with this, its different to other claims in the past. This is one with real credential, but we wont get the evidence we so desperately need without a little initial trust. After all, what is there to lose? What are the negatives to just hearing the guy out for a minute?
Let's not forget the exciting stuff: The US government hired a whistle-blower mitigation company for this. Why would they do that if this was all just the rantings of a madman? This was also covered by 'abovethelaw' which is a really popular and reputable source for lawyers. One of the real heavy-hitting comments on their story is the following:
“I know lawyers. I know good lawyers. I know bad lawyers. I know lawyers in small towns and big cities in dozens of jurisdictions across this great nation. I don’t think a single one of them would sign a complaint like this, or let a client sign it, without being damn sure it had some real weight behind it. And knowing that, in the context of these claims, is chilling.”
It's time we took this topic a little bit more seriously, because it could be the start of the next chapter of humanity if true.
Hello, starlord, welcome to ElReg.
Question: Have you ever heard of confirmation bias?
Most of the folks posting here are scientifically inclined, and we tend to shy away from such behavio(u)r out of reflex.
Essentially, we're of the "don't TELL us it's true, SHOW us it's true" school of thought.
This guy, like all the other guys before him, is telling us, not showing us, thus the skepticism.
He is also using argumentum ab auctoritate, or "argument from authority", a form of false logic. He is saying "I am an authority on the subject, therefore you have to believe me on the subject, and I am not required to provide any proof". Can you see why the proverbial Thinking Man might have problems with that?
If he manages to present any proof of his claims, we'll be fascinated. Until then, he's just another UFO kook.
TINW
Maybe I read it wrong, but it seemed to me to say:
We have evidence of a cover-up to stop questions being asked around out funding,
and not that We have evidence that real UAP evidence has been covered up.
One is the usual internal funding & mission politics of large, diverse organisations
The other is potentially world-changing.
My money is on the former, with added exploitation by a disaffected ex-employee of said organisation.
In 1947, with the Cold War getting more serious daily, it may have made sense to US Intelligence to stage the crash of a saucer at Roswell, recover dummies dressed as ET and so start a rumor that the US would soon gain access to alien technology. The objective: to keep Stalin from contemplating a hot war against the west.
With time, the aim of a (perpetually rumoured but never acknowledged ) "Saucer Recovery Dept" could have shifted to boosting moral at home among Americans who found it reassuring to think that their DoD had an ace up it's sleeve and was also preparing against a Soviet or alien invasion. The SRD would also have served as a decoy for ensnaring potential whistleblowers or spies.
This possibility fits pretty well, It explains why such sensational items were never revealed (because they weren't any), it shows how this current whistleblower could be acting in good faith, and how the story just keeps dragging on for decades.
Except... in 1947 Uncle Joe wasn't going anywhere. He had enough data from Klaus Fuchs and from the constant (and voluntary) dumping of all sorts of nuclear-related info the USA was just filling the USSR with to keep him busy... plus all the other Western & German data the KGB and the prisoner OKBs were busy digesting. Read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16889.Dark_Sun