US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by mcpackieh » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

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.…

> there are a lot of false documents and reports that are sitting around AND highly classified

Exactly this.

I saw a youtube video a while ago about a recently declassified document from the US Navy which says the USS Seawolf reported hearing signals from survivors on the USS Thresher more than a day after the Thresher went missing. The sonar operators on the Seawolf, no doubt well trained professionals, had themselves convinced they heard the Thresher and there were people still left alive. The guy who made the video about this document was very excited; "the US Navy hid this from from us! They told us the Thresher guys died instantly."

But the problem is the Thresher sank in about 2.6 km of water, far deeper than any military submarine can possibly withstand. Furthermore there is declassified video footage of the Thresher's hull on the sea floor, shattered into numerous pieces. There were no pings from the Thresher's sonar; the Seawolf crew were simply mistaken. The report was classified but that doesn't mean it was true.

[Video link deliberately omitted, but you can find it by searching "37 pings"]

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

#412

Post by binbag » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

mcpackieh wrote: post #384

runjake wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> she cites the now-discredited "Gimball Video". (sic) When/where/by whom was the Gimbal video discredited? I’m especially curious because I’m somewhat of an “expert” in the area (having worked on those sensor systems and seen tons of footage in a former life) and I think it’s a legitimate object of some sort [1]. Though I don’t believe it’s extraterrestrial. 1. Eg. The footage of a purported object speeding right ov…

By Mick West numerous times, for instance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

Mick West is very sure he is correct. I'm not sure that's enough.

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

#413

Post by gfodor » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #215

This is a push from Congress to force programs into the open that are secretly capturing Russian/Chinese UAVs right? Folks on the committees are angry that China is trolling US Navy vessels with UAVs and this isn’t being publicized. The “non-earth” origin is the smokescreen, “exotic” covers foreign secret research projects? Something a bit convoluted like this is orders of magnitude more probable in my world model. (…

No, it's a push from Congress to determine if the US has been storing retrieved non-human spacecraft. Hope that helps.

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

#414

Post by esbranson » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #308

ezekg wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wouldn't even be the first time the CIA has done something like this: https://web.archive.org/web/20230611032246/https://www.nytim...

From the NY Times article: > "Over half of all U.F.O. reports from the late 1950's through the 1960's were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights" over the United States, the C.I.A. study says. "This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project." This is exactly what happened wit…

Every witness says there's not a chance in Hell that UFOs are human. But no one reports seeing aliens except abductees.

People desperately want to believe aliens aren't real, and some real mental gymnastics to get there. Like believing "debunking" videos from crackpots and videogame programmers (which real pilots say are nonsensical), or "this one time in the 60s the CIA".

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

#415

Post by dekhn » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #214

godelski wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with the government in the past. Their compute systems definitely are not decades behind. Though some are. They have the the top supercomputers and machines that haven't been updated since the 80's. That's a more realistic picture of the government. That it is this gigantic thing that is in no way remotely monolithic. It's more like The Blob, that it is an amorphis mixture of a lot of things. Neither this…

To add, the reason most computers are behind is usually a mentality of "if it aint broke dont fix it" Same thing in spaceflight. The most recent mars rover uses, essentially, a half-speed imac processor from 1990s.

No, that's not the reason space computers are behind.

Space computers are behind because space technology is based on minimizing risk given the large cost of failure. Using older nodes with well-understood flaws that can be built using old chip equipment is much lower risk than trying to put Intel's latest into a communications satellite.

Few things in space truly would require anything state of the art. The best argument I can think of would be realtime image processing using DNNs- imagine you made a fleet of 1M identical exploration bots and you wanted them to filter out most of their imaging data before sending back the best candidates.

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

#416

Post by rdtsc » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #315

rdtsc wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Agree, for the solo special contractor rate that is quite plausible.

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

#417

Post by tiahura » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

kvetching wrote: post #400

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…

"so you can't blame Rubio for indulging it." He's got access to a lot more than us. This isn't just some congressman indulging it for the lulz. It's so funny to see the mental gymnastics people here make to discredit some of our most elite intelligence officials. Even Rubio is having trouble believing it but he's now admitting to have talked to people with direct access to the program. Grusch is as credible as it get…

The mental gymnastics is believing little green men, capable of sidesteping special relativity, travel X lightyears just to fly around San Diego and occasionally crash somewhere in the desert.

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

#418

Post by Alex3917 » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:50 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #215

This is a push from Congress to force programs into the open that are secretly capturing Russian/Chinese UAVs right? Folks on the committees are angry that China is trolling US Navy vessels with UAVs and this isn’t being publicized. The “non-earth” origin is the smokescreen, “exotic” covers foreign secret research projects? Something a bit convoluted like this is orders of magnitude more probable in my world model. (…

> This is a push from Congress to force programs into the open that are secretly capturing Russian/Chinese UAVs right?

No. The USA has spent the last several decades putting most of its military budget into aircraft carriers, which will all be sunk within the first 24 hours of any conflict with China. This is just a last ditch effort to try to trick China into thinking we might have some kind of deterrent.

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

#419

Post by sph » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:50 PM UTC

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…

That was a great podcast, and the entirety of Kean's journalistic research and integrity basically amounts to "I trust Grusch because he seems like a decent guy and I've been told he's trustworthy. But yeah, he's never seen any UFO, just reports and heard people talk about them, but since I trust him, I implicitly trust their words as well."

I love how Ezra asks her obvious questions about her research like "how is it possible the Pentagon approves of people talking about UFO retrieval if it is such a close-guarded secret?" and she says "good question! I'm not entirely sure!". Seriously? You haven't asked yourself that question before?

This entire UFO saga comes from people with X-files' "I want to believe" poster in their office, and they don't let confirmation bias stop them.

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

#420

Post by NLPaep » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:52 PM UTC

themagician wrote: post #352

abliefern wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

China said they were going to shoot down the US balloon. They lost their lock and never got it back. Meanwhile the US is literally able to shoot down kites.