561–570 of 673 posts
Many people from the government and from the military are putting their reputation and career (and maybe safety) on the line to bring these informations to the public. Let’s at least recognize that before automatically casting doubt.
That used to be the case, but not in our modern world where “all publicity is good publicity”. IMO, this is a stunt from otherwise no-name government officials looking to get some media time.
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Does someone being a credentialed US intelligence official make their public statements more or less trustworthy than the average person?
Certainly to me, especially given he’s testified under oath to multiple congressional committees and the ICIG. He’s made some outrageous accusations that absolutely need to be investigated. Either he’s lying and we have crazy people in very high levels of government, or he’s not and we need to get this information into the public domain.
For those asking "Why now?" ... here's a couple wild takes: The Interstellar Squid have arrived. They're hanging out around Saturn (cf "largest comet ever"). Even after a century of preparation and propaganda, there is a large fraction of humanity who refuses to conceive of intelligence other than human. This is the last gasp at preparing them. That, or the political corruption has gotten so rank that they're scrapin…
To be honest, the more I see the government leak little tidbits about aliens, the less I believe there are aliens.
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I don't get why no one ever throws out time travel as an explanation over extraterrestrial. Given the limit of the speed of information and the expansion of the universe, there's a VERY small area that would even be aware of the signals we've started sending out over the past century to come looking. But Earth would be an extremely interesting destination....for future Earth. Though personally the most likely answer…
Time travel backwards is causality breaking, which is a far, far more important physical principle than relativity. Time travel forwards is quite simple though, but less exciting.
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In the perjury statute, how does it differentiate between standard lies and "heavy allegations"?
Probably somewhere along the specifying people and corporations that are conducting illegal activities - such as withholding information from congress and even killing people to protect this information. Even if congress doesn’t refer him to the justice department for perjury, the billion dollar defense contractors he’s making these allegations about should have no trouble suing him for defamation and false accusatio…
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Why would aliens have to destroy? When I go out for a hike in the woods or a hike in a new state/country that isn’t my home. I don’t go out destroying the land around me. I observe and enjoy my time Maybe these aliens are scientists. Documenting biological life across the galaxy. Maybe they’re VanCampers. Just bouncing from planet to planet for fun If a civilization has presumably reached FTL travel. I imagine many o…
And that's fine and all, but it's been nearly a hundred years and they're still doing the same shit? Are we supposed to believe we are the equivalent of a tourist attraction? One where you seem to have a high likelihood of dying?
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What can the average person do with program names, people involved and locations? Program names mean nothing unless you can look up their details as they're usually fancy codenames that spark everyone's tin foil hats. Makes for a great news story and a conversation on HN about "what it might be" but apart from that its useless.
Average person can’t do anything. Congress can investigate and subpoena any and all people involved and force them to disclose what they know. They can also use eminent domain to take the purported technology.
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> Either he’s lying and we have crazy people in very high levels of government, or he’s not and we need to get this information into the public domain. There are some other possibilities. My main theory for what Grusch specifically is talking about is that intelligence agencies probably deliberately sprinkle different fake programs into the lists that different people are given access to, so that when information lea…
He’s testified under oath to the ICIG who found his claims “urgent and credible” ( which are legal terms. Credible meaning he’s corroborated some claims, and urgent meaning the ICIG had to forward the claims to the intelligence committees in both chambers of congress. So with your idea, the ICIG is in on it too?
A well-designed hypothetical leak-detection mechanism would include literally everyone in the organization, except maybe the most senior leadership. So even if the ICIG knew of its existence, if the system were designed well, they would have no way of knowing which documents were false.
If the ICIG were aware of the existence of the system, they'd also have to keep it secret, which would mean that even if they suspected Grusch was referring to intentionally false documents, they'd have to handle it as though the documents were genuine and forward it on to Congress just like you're describing, right?
I suspect what will happen is that the intelligence committees will meet with the involved parties in a SCIF. Someone will explain that the documents were intentionally false information. The committees will verify this discreetly. After that, I could see three main approaches for handling the situation:
* The committees make a vague statement that they've investigated the claims and there's actually nothing to worry about after all. They'll have Grusch support that claim, but not discuss specifics.
* Same as previous, but with the inclusion of some sort of excuse for the misunderstanding, like the Project Azorian "mining manganese nodules on the ocean floor".
* They'll decide that the amount of detail Grusch has disclosed publicly is too great to convincingly sweep under the rug, and decide to come clean about the leak-detection mechanism.
If they go with either of the first two, it will fuel decades of conspiracy theories about how the government covered up their secret captured alien spacecraft once again, but that's nothing new.
If I'm right about this kind of mechanism, the people running it might even encourage such things to create a pool of far-fetched lore in the fringes of the public. That way, they could randomly sprinkle in false documents related to those things specifically to catch people likely to leak fringe-related material early in their careers, before they're given access to really sensitive information.
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The Chinese government said it is Chinese. Considering the country is encircled by US bases, what incentive would they have to help the US government?
When we spend excessively on DoD, that doesn't "help the US gov", unless slitting our own throats is help.
It doesn't help the government or people of China, though. So they have no reason to help.