It’s worth noting that most of the major news orgs passed on this story despite being offered the opportunity to cover it. We don’t know why they did it yet, but given that various orgs have covered the Snowden documents and other whistleblowers that the government very much didn’t like, my guess is they did it for reasons related to the quality of the story rather than any conversations with government officials who encouraged them not to cover it.
My priors against us having discovered alien tech are very high, though not literally infinite.
But I still don’t have a clear story for exactly what’s going on. Most of the videos of UFOs look pretty similar: silvery orbs flying around at very high speed. I haven’t yet heard an explanation of how this could be explained by camera artefacts, weather phenomena, or anything else.
Other videos like this one released by the Navy show non-spherical objects that even rotate while moving. I struggle to think of what could be causing this.
I’m too lazy to look into it right now, but at the very least there’s a scientific mystery here. Whether or not the explanation turns out to be interesting remains to be seen. There seems to be a big stigma against reporting UAP in the military, which some NASA officials think is hindering our understanding; with fewer recorded phenomena, it’s hard to figure out what’s going on.
Wow. Ok, I guess my odds that this is actually an alien spacecraft went up a little bit.
It’s interesting that at the end they quote a NASA official who stated that they haven’t found any evidence of extraterrestrial life yet, directly contradicting the whistleblower. That means either the evidence the whistleblower has isn’t sufficient to convince the scientists at NASA or the DOD isn’t sharing it with them.
Exactly. The entire thrust behind Grusch’s allegations is that this is being hidden from basically any and all oversight through very, very tight compartmentalization.
Yep, we can easily have multiple hypotheses of the form “something we don’t (yet) understand has caused this”. My odds are more on “weather/camera/light/experimental aircraft we don’t understand” than “aliens we don’t understand”.
It’s worth noting that most of the major news orgs passed on this story despite being offered the opportunity to cover it.
How do you know that?
but given that various orgs have covered the Snowden documents and other whistleblowers that the government very much didn’t like,
The Snowden documents were before the anti-disinformation push of the Trump era that increased the ability to fight stories that the establishment doesn’t like.
However, this does not look like the military trying to censor this story. It seemed to cleared the prepublication review. The New York Times not printing this story might just be “we don’t think it’s good for our brand to publish stories that look wacky to part of our audience”.
FWIW Blumenthal says they went to WaPo first and that WaPo didn’t pass, but was taking too long to publish the story and that he and Kean felt “pressure” to publish faster. “The Post needed more time and we couldn’t wait.”
It’s worth noting that most of the major news orgs passed on this story despite being offered the opportunity to cover it. We don’t know why they did it yet, but given that various orgs have covered the Snowden documents and other whistleblowers that the government very much didn’t like, my guess is they did it for reasons related to the quality of the story rather than any conversations with government officials who encouraged them not to cover it.
My priors against us having discovered alien tech are very high, though not literally infinite.
But I still don’t have a clear story for exactly what’s going on. Most of the videos of UFOs look pretty similar: silvery orbs flying around at very high speed. I haven’t yet heard an explanation of how this could be explained by camera artefacts, weather phenomena, or anything else.
Other videos like this one released by the Navy show non-spherical objects that even rotate while moving. I struggle to think of what could be causing this.
I’m too lazy to look into it right now, but at the very least there’s a scientific mystery here. Whether or not the explanation turns out to be interesting remains to be seen. There seems to be a big stigma against reporting UAP in the military, which some NASA officials think is hindering our understanding; with fewer recorded phenomena, it’s hard to figure out what’s going on.
The rotating one seems well enough explained as the rotation of a lens artifact to me?
The Guardian has been covering this story: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/whistleblower-ufo-alien-tech-spacecraft
Wow. Ok, I guess my odds that this is actually an alien spacecraft went up a little bit.
It’s interesting that at the end they quote a NASA official who stated that they haven’t found any evidence of extraterrestrial life yet, directly contradicting the whistleblower. That means either the evidence the whistleblower has isn’t sufficient to convince the scientists at NASA or the DOD isn’t sharing it with them.
A civilian NASA official would definitely not know about this. It’s being treated as a very important military secret.
Exactly. The entire thrust behind Grusch’s allegations is that this is being hidden from basically any and all oversight through very, very tight compartmentalization.
Yep, we can easily have multiple hypotheses of the form “something we don’t (yet) understand has caused this”. My odds are more on “weather/camera/light/experimental aircraft we don’t understand” than “aliens we don’t understand”.
How do you know that?
The Snowden documents were before the anti-disinformation push of the Trump era that increased the ability to fight stories that the establishment doesn’t like.
However, this does not look like the military trying to censor this story. It seemed to cleared the prepublication review. The New York Times not printing this story might just be “we don’t think it’s good for our brand to publish stories that look wacky to part of our audience”.
FWIW Blumenthal says they went to WaPo first and that WaPo didn’t pass, but was taking too long to publish the story and that he and Kean felt “pressure” to publish faster. “The Post needed more time and we couldn’t wait.”
The main reason WaPo would have delayed is if they wanted additional confirmation/due diligence and didn’t have it.