Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

thehill.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 657 posts

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

#351

Post by bloopernova »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #278
simmanian wrote: post #194

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…

All entertaining to speculate, but it's classic human-centered thinking to suppose that aliens would be regularly appearing a few thousand feet or so from us, but never ever anywhere in the rest of the billions of miles of our solar system and everywhere else in between here and wherever they came from (in addition to their conveniently never appearing within clear view of regular citizens' phones or cameras and neve…

I'd love to look at this solar system panopticon that you apparently have access to.

We know vanishingly little about the day to day movements of the largest solar system objects. Anything smaller than a medium city is incredibly difficult to find and track.

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

#352

Post by themagician »

abliefern wrote: post #289
themagician wrote: post #272

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"?

So many reasons. If you want unlimited funding, if you want people to join, if you want citizens to feel safe… you really want them to feel like the government is powerful. If people think their government is a joke they will treat it as a joke. You don't want people thinking that a dozen people with box cutters can fly planes into buildings. You don't want people thinking that "the greatest superpower in the world" can't defeat literal cave dwellers with ancient soviet era weaponry. You don't want people to know that China's military is much more advanced than the public is aware and they are routinely flying over US airspace undetected.

You want people to feel safe and pay their taxes. You want your citizens to believe that the $2 trillion spend on defense every year goes to good use, creating the kind of military and intelligence apparatus that Hollywood portrays.

We fund these types of propaganda campaigns for the same reasons we have military parades and air shows. We saw how well these kinds of "overwhelmingly powerful" government myths worked for both the Soviets and Axis powers in WW2 and we copied it. Every government chasing power and status wants its citizens to feel like they are the most powerful. China and Russia have similar kinds of myths.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Please, continue to believe that spaceships from other planets have crashed and some elite division within the US government managed to retrieve them and keep it secret for 50+ years. Look past the failing state of our infrastructure and continue to believe that an alien species capable of interstellar travel is interested specifically in Americans, but "they" are keeping you from knowing the truth!

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

#353

Post by red-iron-pine »

abliefern wrote: post #289
themagician wrote: post #272

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"?

> 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"?

Especially when NATO hasn't fired a shot in Ukraine, but is supplying real-time intelligence to the AFU.

US cold war era surplus + EW helped break an entire Russian army, and may yet break a second.

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

#354

Post by heavyset_go »

nradov wrote: post #336
heavyset_go wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

I don't understand your comment. Russia has no real capability to fly surveillance aircraft over US territory. They can barely manage to fly to Syria without breaking down.

I said:

> China/Russia/whoever

As a placeholder for potential US adversaries who might have the motivation do something like this. If you don't like that I said Russia, ignore it and fill it in with China.

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

#355

Post by sokoloff »

echelon wrote: post #343
sokoloff wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To keep Americans happy about the over 3/4 Trillion dollars we spend on defense every year? “You spend a lot, but you get the best!” sounds a lot better than “You spend a lot, but we still suck!”

> “You spend a lot, but you get the best!” sounds a lot better than “You spend a lot, but we still suck!” This argument doesn't make any sense. The US military is better than the next top three militaries combined. The Ukraine war is showing the superiority of decades old Western tech.

That doesn’t stop the DoD from wanting Americans to know that fact, because that’s how they’re funded.

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

#356

Post by WalterBright »

godelski wrote: post #312
tptacek wrote: post #292

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.…

Interestingly, much of the stealth radar technology on the Skunkworks' stealth airplanes came from a Soviet research paper.

Personally, I would have thought such a paper was disinformation. Maybe the Soviets did, too!

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

#358

Post by red-iron-pine »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #222
treyfitty wrote: post #147

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

As a former government employee, I doubt they work directly for the government. The government loves to outsource everything remotely technical to contractors in my (dated) experience. The GS and even the SES pay scales they offer are laughable in comparison to what one can get in the private sector.

Correct, but if you do 5 years in the military, and 15 in FedGov, you can then retire at your GS-15 / SES grade and get a pension + guaranteed healthcare.

Then you start your 2nd career at GD or Lockheed or Microsoft, et al, and get 300k per annum.

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

#359

Post by red-iron-pine »

lend000 wrote: post #170
meroes wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decades behind in ad networks and social graphs but miles ahead in their core competencies maybe?

Not if cybersecurity is supposed to be one of their core competencies.

compared to the private sector? lol

the Verizon Disclosure Reports are still a thing, you can find the 2022 DBIR with breaches across the private sector. they get hit hard all the time.

hell, the biggest breach in FedGov history is cuz of SolarWinds, which pwnd a lot of private sector folks too, including M$

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

#360

Post by heavyset_go »

echelon wrote: post #343
sokoloff wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To keep Americans happy about the over 3/4 Trillion dollars we spend on defense every year? “You spend a lot, but you get the best!” sounds a lot better than “You spend a lot, but we still suck!”

> “You spend a lot, but you get the best!” sounds a lot better than “You spend a lot, but we still suck!” This argument doesn't make any sense. The US military is better than the next top three militaries combined. The Ukraine war is showing the superiority of decades old Western tech.

It can show that the best still isn't good enough for some scenarios, including this scenario where unmanned aircraft are entering US airspace unimpeded.

The US military might be better than the rest, but they were still defeated by poor people in the desert with some Casio watches and decades' old AKs.

Similarly, it seems that small drones are another potential avenue of exploitation in asymmetric warfare.

Post reply on HN