Live data from Hacker News

US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

thehill.com

311–320 of 657 posts

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#311

Ezra 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-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

>the now-discredited "Gimball Video" Source? I don't think there was ever a consensus that it was discredited. Googling "Gimbal Video discredited" doesn't give me anything definitive.

tptacek could be referring to the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

This video does a good job at explaining how the "UFO" is probably an infrared glare, hiding the hot object behind it, and rotating only because the camera rotates when tracking the target from left to right.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#312

Ezra 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-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

Another part is that people don't realize how within the government, and especially the military, there are a lot of false documents and reports that are sitting around AND highly classified. You do this because there are spies and they will steal shit. You want to make that process noisy. It's also beneficial because you may get your adversary to spend millions or billions studying a thing that isn't even possible. Sometimes they even have people "working" on these things (sometimes even unwitting fools that are true believers) because it makes it look more legitimate (and you can funnel money through these). See the ridiculousness of the US and Russian psychic programs.

There's a lot of disinformation as well as smoke and mirrors. It's annoying, but you can't take military documents at face value. It's like reading a scientific paper, you realistically can only judge the merit if you have some domain expertise or enough in an adjacent domain to understand the work itself. That's the whole reason disinformation works in the first place (which is specifically meant to fool experts, even if not all of them, just enough).

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#313

I 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…

Defense is contracted out. So private mil-tech companies can develop high tech items with high paid engineers and sell it to the military...

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#314

All 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 payin…

> All 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 How quickly we forget the entire NSA ANT catalogue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT_catalog#Content

Nothing in that catalogue provides evidence of the government having exotic technology, the fundamental principles of which were completely unknown to the public. Governments can commission custom software and microchips and keep the details of those secret, but those things still operate on principles already known to the public; electronics, exploiting software, etc.

When has this ever not been the case? Maybe gunpowder in the middle ages, when it was best understood by secretive alchemists and utter magic to everybody else. But in the modern scientific era, what are some examples? Even wacky shit like cavity magnetrons don't fit the bill; the basic premise of EM radiation and even radar was already public knowledge by the time these technologies became militarily relevant. The devil was in the details but the broad strokes of the thing weren't utterly exotic.

Even in the case of nuclear weapons, the broad foundation of theory was already public years before they were brought into existence. A great many details were kept secret, but the broad strokes of the thing wasn't secret. When Werner Heisenberg and his colleagues, now in Allied captivity, first heard of the atomic bombings of Japan their first reaction was disbelief.. because they thought such bombs weren't practical to build. But they knew most of the theoretical basis for such bombs already and once they became convinced the bombs were real they had a pretty good idea of how they must have worked.

But then you have alleged antigrav. There's no theoretical basis for such a technology known to the public right now. Nobody can say "well it could be done with XYZ but it would be very tricky to design and expensive to build.."

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#315
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That “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

They 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.

> That does sound a little high. But it seems you have more recent info than I do

This is the solo special contractor rate. You aren't paying a person a million bucks. You're paying a "company" that because that's what expertise in how carbon fibers set in a particular resin matrix subjected to a high-frequency supersonic detonation ring or something, an expertise that globally numbers maybe five, and within the U.S., three, is worth.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#316

I 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…

> Maybe governments around the world have always known about objects flying/floating around.

David Grusch talks about this in one of his interviews: https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/we-are-not-alone-the...

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#317
What 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...

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a push by the DoD to make American's believe in US military and intelligence superiority—only a supremely powerful government would be able to coverup the existence of extraterrestrial life for 50+ years. World order is changing. China is a rising military power. People may even see foreign spy aircraft (e.g. Chinese weather balloons) over US airspace. The DoD would rather you believe it's aliens. This kind o…

This does not track for me at all. I'm sorry but why would anybody in the DOD have an incentive to "make Americans believe in US military and intelligence superiority"?

Because one of the purposes of flying surveillance aircraft in US airspace is psychological warfare. It sends the message that China/Russia/whoever can send whatever they want into US airspace and there's nothing that anyone, including the military, can do about it. It sows fear, uncertainty and doubt in both the public and even members of the military who can recognize the advanced capabilities of the armies they might have to fight. It sends the message that you are not safe at home, and those who are supposed to protect you can't.

However, if people think they're aliens, that instead turns psychological warfare on its head and into something that inspires awe, wonder and possibility. No one is scared in the ways adversaries want them to be scared, and no one doubts the government is actually capable of handling threats from adversaries.

"Aliens" as an explanation quells the potential for panic, versus adversaries successfully inducing the panic responses they desire. It also gives the opportunity for those who care too much about this to be painted as quacks.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#319
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand the helicopter was a special case and sort of a side mission meant to test off the shelf parts.

Sure, but those COTS parts still underwent lots and lots of rad/ vac testing. There's a design-for-resilience vs test-for-resilience tradeoff at play. I'm saying that not all systems require design-for-resilience.

Ingenuity is also running a very customized software stack to go along with the highly tested hardware. IIRC the OS can reboot in a some relatively small number milliseconds. It's meant to be able to crash in mid-air and reboot and recover before the probe loses lift and crashes in most flight envelopes. The software is also set up to crash and reboot rather than try to recover or operate in a compromised state.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All 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 How quickly we forget the entire NSA ANT catalogue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT_catalog#Content

Nothing in that catalogue provides evidence of the government having exotic technology, the fundamental principles of which were completely unknown to the public. Governments can commission custom software and microchips and keep the details of those secret, but those things still operate on principles already known to the public; electronics, exploiting software, etc. When has this ever not been the case? Maybe gunp…

> Nothing in that catalogue provides evidence of the government having exotic technology

It doesn't have to, it was a counter-example to that "decades behind the private sector on computing technology" thesis.

Post reply on HN