July 9, 2021 • 58 mins
It's finally happened -- the long-awaited US report on UFOs (which the government calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs) is public. Some observers consider it revelatory, while others think it's a smoke screen. So what's the truth? What exactly does the report say, and what does this mean for the future?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noled, and they
called me Ben. We are joined, as always with our
super producer, Paul mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. Paul, can we have some
raucous applause? That's right, fellow conspiracy realist, The time has
(00:48):
finally come, According to some. On June one, just a
few days ago, as we record this episode, the US
government released a document with the incredibly unappealing name Preliminary
Assessment colon Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. This is a look, look, look,
I know it's a it's an annoying title in that
(01:11):
it's just so, But think I think about what that means,
you guys, what it's actually saying. Yeah, it's saying Preliminary
assessment UFOs. It's it's it's a nine page publicly available
analysis that you can read right now if you lived
in the US you paid for a small part of it.
(01:31):
This looks at a lot of phenomenon that was previously
considered rumor, tall tales, internet bs. In short, it's the
thing ufologists have dreamed of for decades and decades, something
called disclosure. We have earlier episodes on this a plenty.
We even have a limited series that we're releasing to
(01:54):
focus on this topic. In today's episode as well as
in this mini series, we asked just what exactly is
in this report and whether when it comes to UFOs,
there's something the government still doesn't want you to know
spoiler alert, The answer is yes. Here are the facts.
First things first, this is new, but it's not really new. Yeah. Um,
(02:18):
you know, if read along, it's good light be trade
if you wish. But it's not the first time in
the United States that we've investigated unidentified flying objects, which
are now referred to as the quite less sexy Unidentified
aerial Phenomena or u A p UM. The United States
has investigated reports like this in the past, with things
(02:39):
like Project Bluebook. For example, Man, I know that's one
of your favorites, especially of the old video series. Oh
for certain. Project blue Book was a secret study that
was being done. There was no congressional report. It wasn't
even twenty pages, it wasn't one page. It was just
a It was a thing that was created behind closed doors.
(03:01):
It was studying these very things, these unidentified aerial phenomena.
The United States Air Force were the folks behind that one.
It went from March of nineteen fifty two to December
of nineteen sixty nine. So it had quite a quite
a nice little run there. Um. But guess what that
also wasn't the first time they looked at UFOs, right,
(03:24):
So to be clear, Project blue Book was some of
the encounters that the public had with researchers for Project
Blue Book doubtlessly lent credence to the legends of the
Men in Black, you know, because someone who is vaguely
with the government really wants to follow up on that
thing you said on the radio or that thing you
(03:46):
told the local paper about. And then their ghosts they vanished.
Maybe decades later you learn about the small role you
played in this. That's because you've been mind erased, right well,
you know, uh, the the government at the time, I
regret to say, their ability to erase things from consciousness
(04:06):
has hasn't reached sci fi level. Yet the best way
to do it is through propagand O wag the dog.
They can erase things from public consciousness, but they're they're
always individuals who get by until you know something goes
awry with them. Right, it's just a matter of repeating
the same story enough times where people just forget the
(04:26):
true story. Yeah again, well, as far as we know,
they don't have that tech right right, as far as
we know. So, Like you said, Matt, this was not
the first investigation of its type. It came on the
heels of two similar studies, Projects sign In, and then
its successor, Project Grudge, in nineteen forty nine. Funny story,
(04:48):
Projects sign was initially called Project Saucer All Caps, but
that might have been a little too on the nose
for Uncle Sam, especially because they were trying to keep
it under wraps. Grudge is so a s of though.
What's that about? Well, dude, think about what happened in
nineteen a little thing called Roswell. I don't know what
(05:09):
you're talking about. How cool is it that there were
official United States Air Force studies and you know, just
government studies in general about UFOs right after the Roswell crash,
alleged crash right right, right uh, an alleged weather balloon,
or depending on who you ask, So yeah, you're right.
(05:30):
These two earlier investigations Sign and Grudge. They're not as
well known as Blue Book or this most recent U
A P assessment, but they did establish an incredibly important precedent.
The government decided that whatever the hell was going on
in the sky, military intelligence had to investigate it, because
we have to remember, these are the days of the
(05:51):
Cold War. Both the USA and the USSR are intensely concerned,
terrified that their rivals might gain a technological edge, especially
if it's one significant enough to decide the fate of
human civilization overall. And this was not an invalid fear.
This was very well informed paranoia. But for us to
(06:13):
understand this new report, we have to look a little
bit further into the context of these existing things, right
like this is being this report is being called unprecedented,
and in some ways it is, but it comes from
this lineage of the sometimes contentious governmental military perspective on
(06:34):
these inexplicable things. Like you can see some common assumptions
as well as some conclusions. Blue Book did a lot
more than the current report and the earlier two reports.
They collected over twelve thousand purported UFO sightings and they
did something a lot of these papers do, which is valid.
(06:55):
They conclude the majority of these events can be chalked
up to misunderstood now troll phenomena or to uh, misidentified aircraft.
You know, maybe you just haven't seen a lot of planes, dude.
Isn't that largely where we're at with the current report?
Or I don't mean to be spoiler, no, actually, uh no.
(07:16):
And and the other thing here is that those twelve reports,
one of the reasons there are so many is because
they're collecting reports from everyone from a police officer that
saw something to a bystander on a farm somewhere in
a city somewhere, who are not military personnel. And that
is very different from what's being looked at in the
(07:38):
current report because those are military officials usually fair enough
and um so some according to this report, there had
there may have been some secret aircraft that might have
played a role, and the US has owned secret spy planes.
The A twelve and the U two might have also
been mistaken for UFOs. I mean they're oddly shaped, they're
(08:00):
very untraditional looking aerial crafts, so that would make sense.
But a grand total of seven one reports were classified
as unexplained, with a few pretty notable caveats. Yeah. The
funny thing to me there is, I think it's so
odd about the you two in the eight twelve is
(08:20):
that the US managed to scare the out of itself
with its own things, which is, you know, a positive
statement for their operational security. But to those caveats you mentioned,
the uh, yeah, they're very very careful in blue Book
to say there is no evidence that these sightings we
categorize as unidentified at present represent technological developments or principles
(08:45):
beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge. That is going
to be hugely important later on in the episode. Uh,
there's also they say no evidence that any of these
unidentified sightings were extra restrial vehicles. They went far enough
in that report too. That's one of the closest official
(09:07):
documents that mentions the E word or the A word,
and it's almost like it's only there to dispel speculation. Well,
and they're being very careful with what they're saying. They're
saying there is no evidence to conclude that right that
these were extra terrestrials. Um, so they weren't able to.
(09:29):
It's it's not as though they're saying none of these
were extraterrestrials. They're saying, we have no evidence that would
point to that, right, and think about what that would mean, Like,
how would you actually have evidence that one of these
things is extraterrestrial craft. You would have to have like
photographic imagery of something close enough to prove that or what.
(09:52):
You have to have a chain of custody of some
kind to prove the providence of the craft that you're
looking at and say that's, yeah, that's a good observation.
You have to have extraordinary evidence to back up the
extraordinary claims. So uh, you would need something like a
photograph of something that was clearly intelligent and non human.
Picture your favorite variety of alien furies, scaly, gray, big headed,
(10:16):
we don't care, wearing a T shirt that says Earth
Girls are easy? Why not? It's an okay film, but
it doesn't hold up. And then they'd be standing next
to the president at the time holding a newspaper with
the date the photograph was taken. You know, you eat.
I'm saying you neat a lot of stuff. Those are
the furries right, the furies where the aliens question? Right? Oh,
and that movie didn't come out on Earth until like
(10:38):
the eighties, so that guys traveling through space for like,
you know, these many years before we got it. You
guys are having a lot of fun with this. But
I am I mean a little serious when to say
you would need to have a photograph of a ship
that showed writing or some kind of technology that you
could prove wasn't generally aided on the Earth. How do
(11:02):
you do that? I don't think a photograph would do it.
I think are physical evidence of a mechanism like a
crash in Roswell, New Mexico anyway, but if that were
an alien crash, that would be helpful. Well it's what
we think about in terms of like an alien autopsy
type situation or like really having you know, a physiological
(11:23):
artifact from said crash that we can dissect and then
you know, filter through science and then say, okay, we
don't this doesn't exist. You know, we we can compare
this to like a mongoose or whatever, and we we
do not have anything that represents this particular species or
you know, d NA strain or whatever. Again, I'm not.
I'm not, but yeah, we're all agreeing with the same
(11:46):
with the same thing I think, which is you would
need to have physical evidence of some sort. One other
thing that could be tremendously useful that sci fi authors
speculate on occasionally would be element that do not exist
on our current periodic table. The most profound of those
would be would be elements that are known as it's
(12:09):
a hypothetical thing. No one's proven it yet, but there's
this possibility people have speculated about that says there's an
expanded periodic table. Right, if we knew everything in the universe,
there would be an expanded periodic table. The vast majority
of those heavier things are unstable elements, right, They exist
(12:33):
for a very short amount of time. But there may
be what's described as an island of stability where there
are elements we would not recognize that are super super dense,
but there's somehow not instantly just exploding again and there
would be around for you know, maybe days or so.
That would be proof. Yeah, isn't that something along the
(12:55):
lines of what we have in the work of our
buddy Jeremy Kenyan Lacierre corbell Um, who did a film
called Patient seventeen, and there was an issue in that
that was addressed about a gentleman that claimed to have
been abducted or or you know, contacted in some way
by extradrestrials and had some sort of embedded piece of
shrapnel in his body that was supposedly, according to the
(13:17):
film and the reporting, some unidentified elements. Right. But yeah,
but again, as we as we always have to say
when we talked about this sort of stuff, unidentified doesn't
mean unprecedented, unfortunately, you know. But but yeah, do check
out that documentary. Would love to hear your thoughts on it, folks.
(13:37):
As as the years wound on since the Blue Book days,
more and more and since it was to classify, more
and more people embellished this tale where they claimed it
was a red herring to distract folks from any number
of alleged unproven conspiracies, such as the wonderful story of
m J twelve, Majestic twelve, the purp worded secret organization
(14:02):
of scientists, tycoons and top minds who met with the
President learned aliens were real and tried to figure out
how to deal with that in secret. That is such
a cool story I love it. I love that one.
But so it seemed like consigned to history books, right,
an anomaly, a good history channel special every so often.
(14:23):
But something must have changed. Blue Book sign and Grudge
didn't stop because reports stopped. They stopped for other reasons,
like the inability to find hard proof for their detractors
or the lack of further information or analysis. They all
ended up kind of shrugging their shoulders at the end.
(14:46):
But then in two thousand and seven, the government resumed
investigating UFOs through the formation of something Just folks, heads up,
they're gonna be a lot of acronyms here. We're sorry.
That's government writing, not us. The formation is something called
the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program or a tip HIPS.
(15:07):
Almost sounds like the a ARP or something that it's
not a couple of letters off from that. It's like that, yeah, exactly,
created by then Senator pre Senate Majority leader rather Harry Reid,
and he had some help from some other colleagues, Senator
Ted Stevens and Daniel and Neuiller. This is interesting because
(15:31):
the two party system was still pretty divided at this time, obviously,
perhaps not as much as it is in the current day.
But this was a bipartisan initiative. There were people on
both sides of the Aisland probably didn't agree with each
other about much much of anything, but they did say, Okay,
let's let's figure out what's going on. Uh, and we've
(15:54):
got to. We've got a neat little retrospective clip here
from Harry himself, Matt that you found when I started
talking about this years ago, people made fun of me,
and I think even my own staff thought I was
crazy and talking about it. But in hindsight, I'm glad
I did. So. Yeah, he's same pretty explicitly that he
(16:17):
encountered some stigma for his interest, and stigma will also
become important and at three of the Today's episode, And
and just to point out, it's because since nineteen sixty nine,
from that point up until two thousand and seven, it
was very much treated like this is a sci fi concept,
this is fiction. It's there's no reason to put any
(16:42):
kind of time or money into this whole thing with
unidentified aerial phenomena or UFOs or whatever you wanna call it.
E t s aren't real. Let's just move on from
sixty nine to two thousand seven. And then if you know,
a group of senators who represent us, who do we
vote for, went in and just they did it. Man's
(17:03):
pretty that's pretty cool. They also did it because um,
a great deal of Congress is run by a private
financial interest. Yeah. There's a best a billionaire you're you're
familiar with if you've been, if you've been in the
world of ufology, named Robert Bigelow, and he's the one
(17:24):
who put the hard sell on read Did you talking
about Robert Bigelow, male billionaire? Yeah? Yeah, and UF a enthusiast.
This group, the formation of this group plants his seed,
and that seed later grows into the strange report that
just came out a few days ago. Interesting note, you've
(17:46):
probably seen interviews with people like Louise Alazando and so on,
and he was running He was running this for quite
a while, and he is, to his credit, he's pretty
transparent about what he did, what the program did, and
where he thinks things could be improved or what lessons
were learned. But his program, this program was not really
(18:11):
it wasn't classified classified because Alzando can freely talk about it.
But it adds zero publicity and it operated in obscurity
until two thousand and twelve official Asando is such a
fascinating dude. Can I get just take a second to
apologize from my Deuce Bigelow reference that was inappropriate? And uh?
I offered my humble Mia Kolpa for that one. Are
(18:33):
you apologizing to Deuce or I'm apologizing to the listeners? Uh?
And to both you and Matt and superducer Paul mission
Control Deckend And I mean, Rob Schneider is a pretty
approachable guy. I think you think so. I think it
would be fine. Yeah, but what if he's an animal mode?
What if he's like, you know, thinks he's a cheetah
or something. You know, I wouldn't want to approach that.
(18:55):
Just let him get it out of his system and
then you know, you get and then d esco late
and have a conversation. But keep us in, keep us
in the loop on this. We got your back. So
in two thousand twelve it information started to come to light.
I remember how excited we were when we're starting to
hear whisperings about this, But again, it wasn't until five
(19:18):
years later, I think December. That's when the d o D,
the Department of Defense came forward and said, yes, there
is a thing as part of a defense program that
collects data on these UFO sightings by military personnel. And
despite the fact that we got rid of this thing
(19:38):
that Harry Reid started back in the day, yes, um,
we're still looking into this thing. We're still interested in it.
And that's what led to this thing called the this
group called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force or the
(20:00):
are you the like the from the dream? Yes? Uh?
That you like is coming back in style. They're the
folks that made this report. Uh. This this is the
context of this is the context from which this report spraying.
And so when we look at when we look at
(20:21):
the newest release, it is crucial that we do not
look at it as a single paper and I'm playing
a little bit of a trick on us here, uh,
but instead look at it as a new chapter in
a very very long story. And with all that in mind,
it is time to ask what's in this report? We'll
(20:41):
tell you afterward from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
There are actually two reports. You can only read one
unless you are a member of Congress. One of them
is classified was only given to Congress. So what you're
(21:03):
what you're hearing about when you're reading the news or
listening to shows like this is, in fact, that second
declassified report. It's like we said, it's only nine pages.
It's brevity has been a source of contention in the
UFO community. And when we say the UFO community, we're
talking about a huge swath of opinions perspectives, from die
(21:24):
hard proponents of specific narratives to hardcore skeptics of anything
that bears a whiff of woo, which is in the
skeptic world, wo is what you call nonsense, a woo
whiff you say whiff woo? Yes, okay? Who this makes
me think of like, I'm sorry to go pop culture analogy,
(21:46):
but like Frank Ocean like had this record that he
was supposed to release and it was gonna be this
big record for the label that he was on. So
instead he released this kind of underwhelming sort of arts
record and then that like fulfilled his contract, and then
the next week he at least the real one, which
was blonde um and it kind of got him sued.
But it's a it's it's pretty clever. It's like it's
(22:06):
like here, you guys, here's some red meat for you, you
you know, glom onto this for a minute, and then
we'll release the real one later. But in this case,
I don't think that holds up, because I don't know
they'll ever release the one that only Congress gets to see,
probably not for a long time. There may be a
redactive version somewhere down the line. But so this declassified
version refers to a hundred and forty four total cases,
(22:30):
so far fewer cases than blue Book, but you know
blue Book was longer, uh, and eighty of these cases
there are there's corroboration from multiple sensors, so the technology
is agreeing at least in part with the account of
an eye witness. Yeah, exactly, that's the most important part corroborated.
(22:53):
That's mind blowing and exciting, and it's unfortunately somewhat deflated
by the rest of the report. Just that fact alone
just kind of it shrinks like a balloon that's losing
air but and then falls over New Mexico. Anyway, but
there's I would say there's juicier stuff here too, because
there were at least eleven incidents or eleven side in
(23:15):
this report where American jets like warplanes almost hit unknown
objects while in the air mid air collisions. These things,
these these planes, by the way, are designed to be
nimble and fast, as fast, literally as as agile as
(23:35):
we can make them. We be the US government, and
equally as furious, right right, and these things ye, and
these things got they almost I'm cursing a lot in
this episode, but they almost got their shocked by something
that they couldn't identify. And remember, this group is only
studying reports coming from US military personnel or the intelligence community.
(24:00):
So these are highly qualified people who are making that
initial eye witness report, and then to have them backed
up by you know, some sensors, and then also to
have the witness say, who again is ridiculously qualified, say
I almost got hit by something I could not identify.
This is a step above civilian UFO reports calling into
(24:21):
the local radio station. It's seven steps, seventh order of magnitude,
more significant as the furious seven steps. So, perhaps most importantly,
in eighteen of these HUDT four cases, the objects sited
this this is another huge piece from my perspective. The
objects sited appear to have unusual flight characteristics. And why
(24:46):
is that important? Well, it doesn't necessarily mean aliens obviously,
the word alien does not occur in this in this report, instead,
it indicates the possibility of extant technology beyond the understanding
of the U. S. Military, which is the world's most
dangerous sophisticated known military force. And until the military knows
(25:07):
who created this, the nation as a whole is left
in a tremendously frightening position, which is interesting and then
such a differentiation from what we can typically kind of
write some of these sightings off as which is technology
that the military is very aware of but the civilians
are not aware of. This is again quite a few
cuts above that, like shoe feet just so there these
(25:33):
there these shoes to make it look like you're barefoot
to because like somebody might say, like, oh, who's run
off after this crime that this stamp heist, Like it
can't be that guy, he's barefoot. They still won't give
you service. Are you gonna have chest shirt? Next? Ben?
(25:54):
Was this? It's like you're also actually wearing your shirt,
but it looks like it just seems counterintuitive to But
I support you to the basses. It's not me, man,
It's not me. It's Uncle Sam. I'm just predicted. Now, guys,
stay tuned. Three crotch. Crotch pants are coming. Watch out.
It's not like it's not going to be It's either
is going to be exactly what you expected or not
(26:16):
at all what you expect, and both will be frightening.
We still'll be able to have a whole outfit, the
whole naked outfit and be fully clothed. So did you
help develop cyberpunk? I feel like you helped to do
that in some way, the concept of crotch pants really Wow,
you're talking about the famous Hangdong glitch. It's I think
(26:37):
it's a feature for a lot of people. At this point.
That was codenamed doc Holiday. That was that was her
research credit where it's do uh yeah, right, you're you're
absolutely right. There could be there doubtlessly is we know
for a factor's technology the US government possesses and multiple
other governments possessed that their public is not aware of.
(26:58):
And that doesn't necessarily mean it's all hazy or it's
all nefarious. It could just be a few years ahead
of you know, the kind of smartphone you can buy today,
slightly bigger thumb drive than we have available on the
market currently. Well, the real question here is whether or
not there are um compartmentalized parts of the government that
have technology that is far beyond what the US government
(27:21):
as a whole knows exists. Right, So we're glad you
said that. Right. People writing this report may have no
idea that some smaller group of R and D experts
have created something revolutionary that is so secret because it's
so dangerous, because it's compartmentalized by design to hide from
certain you know, officials that would maybe compromise the operation. Potentially,
(27:45):
compartmentalized intelligence is a real thing. It's what fiction refers
to when it says a need to know basis. So
it's possible that there's some kind of thing like skunk
works in the mix here, um, and we'll get to that.
I'm really glad you had that, man. The assessment is
doing its best to lay out groundwork assumptions, right, ground
floor assumptions, i should say, before they go to the sky.
(28:08):
And one of those. One of those is the idea
that all of these sightings have multiple explanations, and if
you look at them overall, you can't find one silver bullet.
Not everything was a deflating weather balloon, just as not
everything was you know, um ice crystals, so they too
get their heads around this. They group the sightings into
(28:31):
several broad categories, and we'll we'll walk through those briefly
with a direct quote from the report describing them. Number one,
this is the one they lead off with airborne clutter.
That's exactly what it sounds like. Although personally, for my money,
as the taxpayer, I wish they used the phrase sky
trash trash trash. This is not space trash. This is
(28:53):
sky trash, sky trash, so it's not operating in a
zero G situation. So where is this trash being launched
from and who is responsible? Well, many of them launched
from trees, as as it has in birds because birds
were included. And the sky trash that really checks for me,
(29:17):
really really tracks for me. I was thinking, like Scott,
I've I had a friend used to call pigeons sky rats.
I also think sky trash could be a great name
for a like a reality show once people start living
in a permanent airborne environment, you know, don't kid, let's
(29:37):
look kid ourselves. People would watch it. Eighties cartoon or
early nineties cartoons silver Hawks, remember hawks? Yeah, yeah, it
was different era cartoons. But we we have the exact
quote describing what they mean when they foolishly chose airborne
clutter over skytrash. Yeah, let's do that quickly. These objects
(29:59):
include bird balloons. That checks out, right, balloons, We've seen that.
That's sky trash, recreational unmanned aerial vehicles, and that's not
really trash. That's somebody's investment in hobby airborne debris like
plastic bags. That's so beautiful, So beautiful though. I mean, yes,
that muddle is seen and can affect an operator's ability
(30:20):
to identify true targets, such as an enemy aircraft just
flying plastic bags over the Pacific Ocean. So subhetting subheading
for this, people are filthy. Yeah, we managed to put
trash in the sky. Yeah, I mean, there's certainly trash
in the sea. Why shouldn't there be trash on the sky.
(30:40):
Then we head into the slightly science e or sounding
natural atmospheric phenomenon, which would be you know weather, Yes, yes,
it would be weather. It's it's a kind of miscellaneous
category for a bunch of phenomenon that's already understood by science.
In importantly, and this is this is in defense of
(31:02):
the witnesses. Importantly, in some cases this kind of stuff
can be pretty rare, you know, like ball lightning for instances,
somewhat rare. You know, it's it's freaky if you actually
see it. So this ups the likelihood of some of
these things, not all, but some of these things being misidentified. Yes,
(31:23):
and we have another quote for this one as well. Quote.
Natural atmospheric phenomena includes ice crystals, moisture, and thermal fluctuations
that may register on some infrared and radar systems. Again
a k A weather. Yeah, but as a thermal fluctuation
going to be noticed by a pilot, it depends on
the machinery he's flying with, right, or the equipment I
(31:45):
guess so. But it's just in many of these cases,
we know that a witness statement has a lot to
do with what's reported, and there's generally or in many cases,
I guess that's not true. I was going to say,
in many cases the pilot is report seeing something, But
again there are other cases where a pilot is reporting
noticing something, like you said, on a radar that a
(32:07):
thermal pocket may actually see. So waiting at quick question,
you can't see an infrared No, not yet. I'm going
to keep going to predator school. Dude, You'll you'll eventually
don't feel bad. Dude. You know I'm color blind. I'm
just winging it at traffic lights, so I hear you.
(32:28):
I mean, ocular implants are definitely on my list, you know,
So we'll see that's what you think. You have to
think about that now that LASIC is freely available for people, like,
is it the like, what a kick in the pants
If you get LASI and then these new kick ass
ocular implants coming, well, they'll probably be ad supported. It's
certainly in the more extreme version of buying the latest
(32:50):
like video game system and then a newer, better one
comes out. Oh my god, may get flear sick. That's
the latest surgery with I talked about that on the
last UH Listener Mail episode. Fleair the company that makes
these cameras that are a lot smaller than you would think,
and potentially they've got another line in the works that
(33:11):
can go right into your eyeballs. Um, what do we
have next on the list though, guys? Yeah, this is
this is a pretty well done segue. We're talking tech
and we're also going back to the point you brought
up earlier at the third category, is U s g
u S government or industry developmental programs. Now it's getting
a little more juicy, they say, quote, some u A
(33:33):
P observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs
by US entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that
these systems accounted for any of the u A reports
we collected, Meaning that this is the beginning of one
of the asks from from the report, because the report
is asking for stuff just as it's um, just as
(33:57):
it's concluding some things, and so they're building a case
for these asks will get from these questions, These demands
will get to at the end, and not demands request.
Is this referring to like R and D for corporations
that aren't government related? Is that what this is implying? Quite,
It's we have to be careful of the language. It's
(34:17):
not not saying that. It's not not saying that like
Wendy's or McDonald's has a secret blimp program. Oh no,
be blimpy. How did I admittend know we're keeping it
in we're keeping in it. It would be blimpy though
for the record, I mean, but yeah, you're right, this
could mean, um, this could mean a non governmental entity.
(34:38):
But they're they're probably without reading too uch and too intent,
they're probably referring to the existence of classified R and
D with places like Lockheed or other private public partnerships
or private slash government partnerships. And what they're saying is
it is possible that they ran into one or more
(34:58):
classified projects concerning technology most people don't know about yet,
and if those projects exist, whoever runs them did not
think this was important enough to reveal their existence. Oh,
you compromise their secrecy. Listen to that. We were unable
to confirm again, Okay, you were unable to confirm that. Yeah,
(35:21):
that's not You're not You're not saying anything here. Do
you think this is one of the more telling passages
in the report? It is one of them. Yeah, it
is one. I just love to picture, like someone someone
calling on the phone to some shadowy like shadowy office
building or warehouse somewhere and they're like, Hello, this is
(35:42):
blah blah blah from you. Uh, can you can you confirm?
Can you confirm that citing number one thirty two is
indeed evidence of Project Shoe Feet And then they're like
wrong number, click, that could have happened. Probably not with Shoefie,
but it could have happened. But we also know that
the government can get all up in your business if
(36:03):
you have a patent that threatens national security, right or
or so. It's interesting that they didn't go further into that. Well,
we're gonna talk about one of the reasons why you
and I and Ben and everybody else don't get to
know everything that exists in this report. Sure, yeah, I
(36:23):
mean by necessity, you could say the government has to
treat members of its own public sometimes as though they
themselves are agents of foreign powers. It's an ugly necessity,
but it's true. And that brings us to the fourth
category they have. This is probably one of the more
frightening ones, foreign adversary systems. This is like, this is
(36:45):
what politicians like Marco Rubio we're talking about, and then
rightly frightens a lot of people. They say, specifically some
unidentified aerial phenomena, maybe technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation,
or a non her mental entity. I should have mentioned
that earlier, such a tricky phrase. Non governmental entity literally
(37:06):
anything that is not one of the hundred nineties seven
something recognized un nations. That's a lot of stuff. That's
stuff like uh, you know, um that stuff like you
know Lever, that's what. Yeah, whatever. The biggest companies you
can think of are any of the private space companies
(37:26):
that specifically what I'm thinking about. Oh yeah, it's a
really good point. Map. Yeah, that's a great point. And
so why is this disturbing? Well, it's because the US
spends a ton of money, blood and time trying to
stay as up to date as possible and the capabilities
of rival powers, and we're not like, go back to
our phone call. Example. This isn't just a case of
(37:47):
some some asset calling US authorities, right, somebody who's like
working at a factory somewhere else and calling authorities and saying, hey,
so and so has invented a new kind kind of
ballistic missile, a new kind of i cb M, so
watch out. It's more along the lines of a bunch
of different people in the in the U S intelligence
(38:08):
ecosystem saying like, hey, we've been monitoring this professor's work,
their latest research, their recent travel, and we also noticed
and they start to do it kind of a Charlie
Day thing. We've also noticed that there's an increase in
imports of you know whatever, and a retooling of this
factory that had previously been mothballed and inserted this fact
(38:30):
and this fact and this fact, and then they corroberate
it and they say, we predict Country X is working on,
you know, a ballistic missile of blah blah blah type,
and unless we do anything, they're gonna have a prototype
in about two years. It's predictive. That's how the system
is supposed to work. Yeah, that's that's not terrifying. I
(38:50):
mean it's also comforting, but it's terrifying. It's comforted ter
arra tear tearum thing for never mind, we will work
on this later. Um. Yeah. No. It reminds me of
like I guess, the idea and maybe this is more
(39:10):
the private industry thing, but I picture like a scientist,
like a rogue scientist working on something in a lab
and the government gets wind of it, and then the
men in black come and take him away, you know,
like will a Wilhelm Reich type situation. The idea that
he's working on some sort of mystical rainmaking machine that
could threaten uh, you know, the government in somewhere. Yeah, exactly.
(39:33):
And this. This means that if there is a earthly
technology made by a foreign power, and it's something that
remains inexplicable after repeated direct observation, it doesn't seem to
be deterred by any conventional countermeasures, then that means there
would have been innumerable indicators of the research and the
(39:56):
construction leading up to those observations. So that means multiple
agencies would have had to miss some pretty blatant signals
over a fairly long period of time. And if that's true,
then that means we have no idea what else that
enemy power could be working on. And this point right here,
these foreign adversary systems, this is why there's any money
(40:21):
for for this to be written. This is why anyone
in the government and military and intelligence community is actually
interested in these reports. It's because of the potential for
that situation that Ben just described. Yeah, exactly right. That's
what a lot of people who have looked me absolutely
not believe in the existence of extra terrestrials or the
(40:44):
existence of other non human intelligent life. This is the
thing that keeps those folks up at night. But this
isn't the end of the report. We're gonna pause for
a word from our sponsor, and then let's get weird
with it and we're back. There is one more category,
(41:05):
my favorite, yes, mine as well. No, it is other Other.
You knew it was coming, folks. Other. That's right. Just
like Project blue Book, this report keeps an empty seat
at the explanation table, and they are incredibly careful to
never say alien, to never be like little Green Men
or anything like that. But other could literally mean anything.
(41:29):
So my pitches, what about sky wizards? Can we just
please have like some like this has been described as
the sky Wizard by pilots observing the phenomenon. Clearly, the
sky wizards could really help with the sky trash problem.
You know, they could just like de materialize that with
a swoop of their sky wands. So I went through
this thing where I was just writing down funny phrases
(41:52):
that had the words sky and the those are those
are the two that made it sky trash and sky
Wizards love it. Want arc though, like energy beings? Yeah,
I want that. I want ar cons just made of
pure glowing light. Yeah. They're really really good at destroying
zerg structures. I don't know, that's what I've generally aware
of them. For I thought you were going like ar
(42:13):
cons from the invisibles, from a microscopic universe. Oh no,
I was firmly in the StarCraft universe. Okay, I was
wondering which you were playing in. We're in all of them.
We're in a nerd multiverse. But let's let's take a
look at how this report. How this report tackles it's
most controversial category here. Well, it frames it up in
(42:38):
a way that they hope, I imagine we can wrap
our tiny, you know, civilian brains around um. It says, quote,
although most of the UAP described in our data set
probably remain unidentified due to limited data or challenges to collection, processing,
or analysis, we may require additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect,
(42:59):
on analyze, and characterize some of them. We would group
such objects in this category pending scientific advances that allowed
us to better understand them. The U A P t
F intends to focus additional analysis on the small number
of cases where a U A P appeared to display
unusual flight characteristics. Remember from earlier or signature management now
(43:25):
now ben signature, this is like thermal right, like like
like like what it's putting off? What kind of energy
it's putting off right. This This refers in general to
uh to the idea that some of these things, some
of these like objects you could call them, were emitting
interference signals, or they were they were admitting stuff that
(43:50):
the the jets, the aircraft, the known aircraft could detect,
and that the way these signatures may have been deployed,
either to obscure their appearance on sensors or to um
impair the function of those sensors may something about it
(44:10):
may have appeared purposeful. They're not gonna They're not gonna
explicitly say that. The scariest thing here is that one
sentence they put in the middle, we may require additional
scientific knowledge, just like Blue Book, that that's why we
said this would be important. We got there. They're saying humanity,
(44:34):
or at the very least the humans of the entirety
of the U. S. Government, don't know enough about science
to explain what's happening. That's unfortunately pretty anti sky Wizard,
but I think it's I think it's a profound point.
It's an incredible admission. It's almost like saying we don't
(44:54):
know enough about life on Earth to explain or prove
the existence of God. You know what I mean, it's
it's a very interesting line or it's a very interesting
statement of a thing that I think we all know exists,
but it's not something you typically see the government copying to. Yeah,
it's literally this thing is advanced beyond our understanding of
(45:17):
this moment of current understanding for us, at least on
this team that are generating these reports, right or on
this on this team is generating this report, and on
the people who are observing these things, at least those
eight team that had weird flight patterns and whatever other
handful that was doing the signals stuff. I mean, that's
(45:37):
and I think that's as close as we're going to
get to somebody's visiting us, right right. Yeah. And they're
also they're also importantly noting there's a very small sample
size available. They have a lack of the data that
they would ideally have for all these reports. But they're
they're admitting there is a mystery afoot and that that
is one of the biggest revelations of this report. They
(46:00):
go in the detail about it, this is the moment
you should freak out. By the way, if you are
a fan of disclosure, They say some U A P.
Appeared to remain stationary and winds aloft, move against the winds,
maneuver abruptly, or move at a considerable speed without discernible
means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military
aircraft systems processed radio frequency energy associated with UAP sidings.
(46:25):
That's what they mean by signature management. And then they
start to come to some conclusions. Perhaps most importantly, they
explicitly say that whatever this is, it poses an active
hazard to flight. Means it means that some of these
are physical objects. These are not just misidentified pretty lights
in the sky. And then they say there could be
(46:47):
a broader danger if they represented uh sophisticated, unstoppable surveillance
of military activities. But on one good note, they say, well,
it's kind of a good note. It goes back to
your earlier note about language there, Matt. The report finds
no evidence so far that u A P or tech
from a foreign power, and then it cites constraints on
(47:11):
its ability to properly investigate the sightings, offer suggestions on
how to improve the research. So you say, what to improve?
Now we get to the request that they have, Yeah,
and they and they do have some requests in and
we can probably argue a little bit about how actually
needed these things are. I just wanted to say, um.
(47:34):
In the report, they do point out that many of
these sightings occur around active military operations and or um
tests and practice runs and these kinds of things. Again
likely because and they even say this in report, likely
because these are military personnel. So when you know, when
they've got a jet out running a test flight or something,
(47:55):
that's when they encounter something. Or if they're doing, um,
some kind of war game, that's when they encounter something
because they're actually outdoing stuff. They're not just you know,
sitting on a base somewhere with some binoculars. And my
whole point here is just to say that it would
make sense that it would be considered more threatening by
(48:15):
the government because these things are occurring when military operations
are occurring. That makes sense. Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
So this is so they see a clear potential for danger,
right and there makes everything makes you want Everything that
they indicate or allude to really makes you wonder what's
(48:36):
in that classified report. So here's what they want to improve,
and they were public with the stuff they want, Uh,
they want better reporting standards across all the armed services.
They want more consolidation of data, and they want deeper analysis.
They want aviators to have less stigma about reporting strange
stuff in the sky. And they also want these aviators
(48:56):
not to halt test or training when they see some
the unusual, but to keep eyes on it and come
back with as much information as they can. That's a
that's a behavior that would have to be learned, because
you know, in general, when you see stuff like this,
you're you're supposed to you're probably gonna halt what you're doing, right, Yeah,
(49:16):
And then there's a huge deal removing the stigma, because
that's one of the major reasons for a long time
in the military why you just wouldn't talk about it
if you were a pilot and you saw something is
because you would get ridiculed and who knows, maybe even
in trouble because you're not seeing things clearly, or you're
seeing things that aren't there. Um, it's just it. If
(49:38):
we can get rid of that, then we're going to
get a lot more than four reports real fast, true, true,
and they'll be reports of the same caliber. Right. These
will be from experts, from professionals in the military. They
also I thought This was pretty smart. They also want
to expand data collection and analogy is through algorithms, so
(50:02):
being able to run analysis that allows them to locate
u AP hot spots or clusters if those exist, and
then to identify like a baseline measure for unusual stuff.
That's hugely important because that would let you know if
activity was picking up. And then, of course money when
you we're not joking, they want money. Like a lot
(50:24):
of government initiatives, they definitely need more funding. And they
propose three plans, a UAP collection strategy and R and
D Technical ROADBAP, and an overall program plan to help
figure out where that money should go. And it sounds
like a bit of a cash grab, sure, but it's
not unfair because those steps that we just outlined need
a ton of coordination and a ton of funding, and
(50:47):
each each thing they need comes with a price tag,
and that that is where the report leaves off. Right.
There is a need and we we know we can
make a plan for our next steps, but we need support,
we need funding, we need more information. And when we
get to the question of what happens now, well, the
(51:09):
figurative UFO is still up in the air. Uh. These
were these things, whatever these UAP phenomenon or reports are,
they probably didn't stop. It's not like they just petered off.
This is an ongoing event, and honestly, if we're gonna
be cynical, we're gonna talk brass tacks about it. The
two big deciding factors are how credible a threat policymakers
(51:33):
see this as being and how public reaction goes. That's
going to determine the political classes opinion on the investigation.
As much of a bummer as it might be to
admit it, that's not really a bummer. If supporting further
research feels like a ticket to reelection, yeah, most politicians
are going to support it. I I you know, you
(51:54):
could say that's depressing because it's clearly self motivated, but
it's also representing the will of their instituents, you know.
So can we really fault them? I don't know. If
we can't know, I don't think so. But the biggest
takeaway from me is something that that George Knapp really
really hit on when he was reporting on this for
(52:15):
Oh gosh, I can't remember what it was for. I
know it's a Las Vegas. It's eight News now in
Las Vegas. That's where he's reporting, and he's from Mystery Wire.
You may recognize the name George Knapp. But one of
the big things he pointed out is that this nine
pages or six actual pages that we got to look
at that we mentioned at the top of this are
(52:36):
nothing compared to the thirty pages that Congress scott. And
if this thing does get funding and this program goes
on for let's say a decade, man fingers across, let's
say a decade, imagine all the information that would be
gathered and then we'd get at least an eighteen page report.
(52:57):
Why why did they owe us the nine Oh is
this strong word? But like what compelled them to give
us the nine pager in the first place, other than
like leaks over be right? But I mean that's it.
It's just literally like, Okay, people have questions. This is
like a public issue, an issue of public concern. We
need to tell the people something. It was a pork
(53:18):
and it was a piece of pork in one of
the bills they got passed for COVID relief. Correct. I
think that's how this that's why they had to give
a report. They were mandated given a time frame it's
not as like it feels like a good faith effort.
But again, we're in the same boat as you because
(53:41):
they are they're saying they don't have enough information, and
that's what we're saying too, And Nap is absolutely right.
You have to wonder what's in the classified report. There
may be specifics in there that changed the course of conversation,
but it's tough to guess whether there would be anything
in or that would be considered revelatory by the average
(54:04):
member of the public. Right the classified report, you know,
what's most likely is that it contains other classified information
about US censor capabilities. That's something you know, the average
member of the public probably wouldn't care about, but something
that intelligence in a foreign country would be very interested
in knowing. And then surveillance methods maybe maybe possible secret technology,
(54:30):
classified technology, or maybe it's just there are specificities unredacted
about the individuals reporting, you know, their names, things that
they probably don't want to have released to the public
because they don't want you ethologists hounding them at home,
you know what I mean, Uh, it could be any
of those. In my favorite world, you guys, I like
(54:51):
to think that instead of a thirty page report. What
it really is is like a nice go get them tiger,
let to congress from actual aliens, you know, doing a
good job, got a little balloon and saucer and then
you know, no one will believe you. Yes, they're written
(55:12):
language is like seventeen thousand font so it's just one
character on thirty pages there it is character sort of
like a like a like like a serial killer, you know,
taunting the police kind of, you know, or maybe they're
just trying to reach us about Earth's extended warranty, or
(55:33):
just the fact that like, hey, maybe you know climate change.
I hope it's written exactly like that. Or they're they're
paying the billionaires to convince all of us to go
to Mars so that they can ever that's what it is.
What I love about this plan is how straightforward it is.
Yeah uh yeah, I mean we're joking a little bit,
(55:56):
but we we hope you've enjoyed here in this kind
of what a one to this report as well as
perhaps most crucially it's indications for the future. At this point,
we passed the UFO torch to you, fellow listeners. What
do you think is this a genuine accurate assessment released
in good faith. Is this a wag the dog a
(56:19):
distraction from something else? Is this the tip of a
larger classified iceberg? What happens next? Let us know. We
try to be easy to find online. If you have
a spaceship, just fly over to Atlanta. You know we'll
we'll take you out. We got a pretty big air
airport here you might have heard about. But yeah. You
(56:41):
can find us on the internet the usual places of note.
We are on Twitter and Facebook and also YouTube as
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(57:04):
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(57:26):
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(58:02):
know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noled, and they
called me Ben. We are joined, as always with our
super producer, Paul mission controlled decads. Most importantly, you are you,
You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. Paul, can we have some
raucous applause? That's right, fellow conspiracy realist, The time has
(00:48):
finally come, According to some. On June one, just a
few days ago, as we record this episode, the US
government released a document with the incredibly unappealing name Preliminary
Assessment colon Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. This is a look, look, look,
I know it's a it's an annoying title in that
(01:11):
it's just so, But think I think about what that means,
you guys, what it's actually saying. Yeah, it's saying Preliminary
assessment UFOs. It's it's it's a nine page publicly available
analysis that you can read right now if you lived
in the US you paid for a small part of it.
(01:31):
This looks at a lot of phenomenon that was previously
considered rumor, tall tales, internet bs. In short, it's the
thing ufologists have dreamed of for decades and decades, something
called disclosure. We have earlier episodes on this a plenty.
We even have a limited series that we're releasing to
(01:54):
focus on this topic. In today's episode as well as
in this mini series, we asked just what exactly is
in this report and whether when it comes to UFOs,
there's something the government still doesn't want you to know
spoiler alert, The answer is yes. Here are the facts.
First things first, this is new, but it's not really new. Yeah. Um,
(02:18):
you know, if read along, it's good light be trade
if you wish. But it's not the first time in
the United States that we've investigated unidentified flying objects, which
are now referred to as the quite less sexy Unidentified
aerial Phenomena or u A p UM. The United States
has investigated reports like this in the past, with things
(02:39):
like Project Bluebook. For example, Man, I know that's one
of your favorites, especially of the old video series. Oh
for certain. Project blue Book was a secret study that
was being done. There was no congressional report. It wasn't
even twenty pages, it wasn't one page. It was just
a It was a thing that was created behind closed doors.
(03:01):
It was studying these very things, these unidentified aerial phenomena.
The United States Air Force were the folks behind that one.
It went from March of nineteen fifty two to December
of nineteen sixty nine. So it had quite a quite
a nice little run there. Um. But guess what that
also wasn't the first time they looked at UFOs, right,
(03:24):
So to be clear, Project blue Book was some of
the encounters that the public had with researchers for Project
Blue Book doubtlessly lent credence to the legends of the
Men in Black, you know, because someone who is vaguely
with the government really wants to follow up on that
thing you said on the radio or that thing you
(03:46):
told the local paper about. And then their ghosts they vanished.
Maybe decades later you learn about the small role you
played in this. That's because you've been mind erased, right well,
you know, uh, the the government at the time, I
regret to say, their ability to erase things from consciousness
(04:06):
has hasn't reached sci fi level. Yet the best way
to do it is through propagand O wag the dog.
They can erase things from public consciousness, but they're they're
always individuals who get by until you know something goes
awry with them. Right, it's just a matter of repeating
the same story enough times where people just forget the
(04:26):
true story. Yeah again, well, as far as we know,
they don't have that tech right right, as far as
we know. So, Like you said, Matt, this was not
the first investigation of its type. It came on the
heels of two similar studies, Projects sign In, and then
its successor, Project Grudge, in nineteen forty nine. Funny story,
(04:48):
Projects sign was initially called Project Saucer All Caps, but
that might have been a little too on the nose
for Uncle Sam, especially because they were trying to keep
it under wraps. Grudge is so a s of though.
What's that about? Well, dude, think about what happened in
nineteen a little thing called Roswell. I don't know what
(05:09):
you're talking about. How cool is it that there were
official United States Air Force studies and you know, just
government studies in general about UFOs right after the Roswell crash,
alleged crash right right, right uh, an alleged weather balloon,
or depending on who you ask, So yeah, you're right.
(05:30):
These two earlier investigations Sign and Grudge. They're not as
well known as Blue Book or this most recent U
A P assessment, but they did establish an incredibly important precedent.
The government decided that whatever the hell was going on
in the sky, military intelligence had to investigate it, because
we have to remember, these are the days of the
(05:51):
Cold War. Both the USA and the USSR are intensely concerned,
terrified that their rivals might gain a technological edge, especially
if it's one significant enough to decide the fate of
human civilization overall. And this was not an invalid fear.
This was very well informed paranoia. But for us to
(06:13):
understand this new report, we have to look a little
bit further into the context of these existing things, right
like this is being this report is being called unprecedented,
and in some ways it is, but it comes from
this lineage of the sometimes contentious governmental military perspective on
(06:34):
these inexplicable things. Like you can see some common assumptions
as well as some conclusions. Blue Book did a lot
more than the current report and the earlier two reports.
They collected over twelve thousand purported UFO sightings and they
did something a lot of these papers do, which is valid.
(06:55):
They conclude the majority of these events can be chalked
up to misunderstood now troll phenomena or to uh, misidentified aircraft.
You know, maybe you just haven't seen a lot of planes, dude.
Isn't that largely where we're at with the current report?
Or I don't mean to be spoiler, no, actually, uh no.
(07:16):
And and the other thing here is that those twelve reports,
one of the reasons there are so many is because
they're collecting reports from everyone from a police officer that
saw something to a bystander on a farm somewhere in
a city somewhere, who are not military personnel. And that
is very different from what's being looked at in the
(07:38):
current report because those are military officials usually fair enough
and um so some according to this report, there had
there may have been some secret aircraft that might have
played a role, and the US has owned secret spy planes.
The A twelve and the U two might have also
been mistaken for UFOs. I mean they're oddly shaped, they're
(08:00):
very untraditional looking aerial crafts, so that would make sense.
But a grand total of seven one reports were classified
as unexplained, with a few pretty notable caveats. Yeah. The
funny thing to me there is, I think it's so
odd about the you two in the eight twelve is
(08:20):
that the US managed to scare the out of itself
with its own things, which is, you know, a positive
statement for their operational security. But to those caveats you mentioned,
the uh, yeah, they're very very careful in blue Book
to say there is no evidence that these sightings we
categorize as unidentified at present represent technological developments or principles
(08:45):
beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge. That is going
to be hugely important later on in the episode. Uh,
there's also they say no evidence that any of these
unidentified sightings were extra restrial vehicles. They went far enough
in that report too. That's one of the closest official
(09:07):
documents that mentions the E word or the A word,
and it's almost like it's only there to dispel speculation. Well,
and they're being very careful with what they're saying. They're
saying there is no evidence to conclude that right that
these were extra terrestrials. Um, so they weren't able to.
(09:29):
It's it's not as though they're saying none of these
were extraterrestrials. They're saying, we have no evidence that would
point to that, right, and think about what that would mean, Like,
how would you actually have evidence that one of these
things is extraterrestrial craft. You would have to have like
photographic imagery of something close enough to prove that or what.
(09:52):
You have to have a chain of custody of some
kind to prove the providence of the craft that you're
looking at and say that's, yeah, that's a good observation.
You have to have extraordinary evidence to back up the
extraordinary claims. So uh, you would need something like a
photograph of something that was clearly intelligent and non human.
Picture your favorite variety of alien furies, scaly, gray, big headed,
(10:16):
we don't care, wearing a T shirt that says Earth
Girls are easy? Why not? It's an okay film, but
it doesn't hold up. And then they'd be standing next
to the president at the time holding a newspaper with
the date the photograph was taken. You know, you eat.
I'm saying you neat a lot of stuff. Those are
the furries right, the furies where the aliens question? Right? Oh,
and that movie didn't come out on Earth until like
(10:38):
the eighties, so that guys traveling through space for like,
you know, these many years before we got it. You
guys are having a lot of fun with this. But
I am I mean a little serious when to say
you would need to have a photograph of a ship
that showed writing or some kind of technology that you
could prove wasn't generally aided on the Earth. How do
(11:02):
you do that? I don't think a photograph would do it.
I think are physical evidence of a mechanism like a
crash in Roswell, New Mexico anyway, but if that were
an alien crash, that would be helpful. Well it's what
we think about in terms of like an alien autopsy
type situation or like really having you know, a physiological
(11:23):
artifact from said crash that we can dissect and then
you know, filter through science and then say, okay, we
don't this doesn't exist. You know, we we can compare
this to like a mongoose or whatever, and we we
do not have anything that represents this particular species or
you know, d NA strain or whatever. Again, I'm not.
I'm not, but yeah, we're all agreeing with the same
(11:46):
with the same thing I think, which is you would
need to have physical evidence of some sort. One other
thing that could be tremendously useful that sci fi authors
speculate on occasionally would be element that do not exist
on our current periodic table. The most profound of those
would be would be elements that are known as it's
(12:09):
a hypothetical thing. No one's proven it yet, but there's
this possibility people have speculated about that says there's an
expanded periodic table. Right, if we knew everything in the universe,
there would be an expanded periodic table. The vast majority
of those heavier things are unstable elements, right, They exist
(12:33):
for a very short amount of time. But there may
be what's described as an island of stability where there
are elements we would not recognize that are super super dense,
but there's somehow not instantly just exploding again and there
would be around for you know, maybe days or so.
That would be proof. Yeah, isn't that something along the
(12:55):
lines of what we have in the work of our
buddy Jeremy Kenyan Lacierre corbell Um, who did a film
called Patient seventeen, and there was an issue in that
that was addressed about a gentleman that claimed to have
been abducted or or you know, contacted in some way
by extradrestrials and had some sort of embedded piece of
shrapnel in his body that was supposedly, according to the
(13:17):
film and the reporting, some unidentified elements. Right. But yeah,
but again, as we as we always have to say
when we talked about this sort of stuff, unidentified doesn't
mean unprecedented, unfortunately, you know. But but yeah, do check
out that documentary. Would love to hear your thoughts on it, folks.
(13:37):
As as the years wound on since the Blue Book days,
more and more and since it was to classify, more
and more people embellished this tale where they claimed it
was a red herring to distract folks from any number
of alleged unproven conspiracies, such as the wonderful story of
m J twelve, Majestic twelve, the purp worded secret organization
(14:02):
of scientists, tycoons and top minds who met with the
President learned aliens were real and tried to figure out
how to deal with that in secret. That is such
a cool story I love it. I love that one.
But so it seemed like consigned to history books, right,
an anomaly, a good history channel special every so often.
(14:23):
But something must have changed. Blue Book sign and Grudge
didn't stop because reports stopped. They stopped for other reasons,
like the inability to find hard proof for their detractors
or the lack of further information or analysis. They all
ended up kind of shrugging their shoulders at the end.
(14:46):
But then in two thousand and seven, the government resumed
investigating UFOs through the formation of something Just folks, heads up,
they're gonna be a lot of acronyms here. We're sorry.
That's government writing, not us. The formation is something called
the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program or a tip HIPS.
(15:07):
Almost sounds like the a ARP or something that it's
not a couple of letters off from that. It's like that, yeah, exactly,
created by then Senator pre Senate Majority leader rather Harry Reid,
and he had some help from some other colleagues, Senator
Ted Stevens and Daniel and Neuiller. This is interesting because
(15:31):
the two party system was still pretty divided at this time, obviously,
perhaps not as much as it is in the current day.
But this was a bipartisan initiative. There were people on
both sides of the Aisland probably didn't agree with each
other about much much of anything, but they did say, Okay,
let's let's figure out what's going on. Uh, and we've
(15:54):
got to. We've got a neat little retrospective clip here
from Harry himself, Matt that you found when I started
talking about this years ago, people made fun of me,
and I think even my own staff thought I was
crazy and talking about it. But in hindsight, I'm glad
I did. So. Yeah, he's same pretty explicitly that he
(16:17):
encountered some stigma for his interest, and stigma will also
become important and at three of the Today's episode, And
and just to point out, it's because since nineteen sixty nine,
from that point up until two thousand and seven, it
was very much treated like this is a sci fi concept,
this is fiction. It's there's no reason to put any
(16:42):
kind of time or money into this whole thing with
unidentified aerial phenomena or UFOs or whatever you wanna call it.
E t s aren't real. Let's just move on from
sixty nine to two thousand seven. And then if you know,
a group of senators who represent us, who do we
vote for, went in and just they did it. Man's
(17:03):
pretty that's pretty cool. They also did it because um,
a great deal of Congress is run by a private
financial interest. Yeah. There's a best a billionaire you're you're
familiar with if you've been, if you've been in the
world of ufology, named Robert Bigelow, and he's the one
(17:24):
who put the hard sell on read Did you talking
about Robert Bigelow, male billionaire? Yeah? Yeah, and UF a enthusiast.
This group, the formation of this group plants his seed,
and that seed later grows into the strange report that
just came out a few days ago. Interesting note, you've
(17:46):
probably seen interviews with people like Louise Alazando and so on,
and he was running He was running this for quite
a while, and he is, to his credit, he's pretty
transparent about what he did, what the program did, and
where he thinks things could be improved or what lessons
were learned. But his program, this program was not really
(18:11):
it wasn't classified classified because Alzando can freely talk about it.
But it adds zero publicity and it operated in obscurity
until two thousand and twelve official Asando is such a
fascinating dude. Can I get just take a second to
apologize from my Deuce Bigelow reference that was inappropriate? And uh?
I offered my humble Mia Kolpa for that one. Are
(18:33):
you apologizing to Deuce or I'm apologizing to the listeners? Uh?
And to both you and Matt and superducer Paul mission
Control Deckend And I mean, Rob Schneider is a pretty
approachable guy. I think you think so. I think it
would be fine. Yeah, but what if he's an animal mode?
What if he's like, you know, thinks he's a cheetah
or something. You know, I wouldn't want to approach that.
(18:55):
Just let him get it out of his system and
then you know, you get and then d esco late
and have a conversation. But keep us in, keep us
in the loop on this. We got your back. So
in two thousand twelve it information started to come to light.
I remember how excited we were when we're starting to
hear whisperings about this, But again, it wasn't until five
(19:18):
years later, I think December. That's when the d o D,
the Department of Defense came forward and said, yes, there
is a thing as part of a defense program that
collects data on these UFO sightings by military personnel. And
despite the fact that we got rid of this thing
(19:38):
that Harry Reid started back in the day, yes, um,
we're still looking into this thing. We're still interested in it.
And that's what led to this thing called the this
group called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force or the
(20:00):
are you the like the from the dream? Yes? Uh?
That you like is coming back in style. They're the
folks that made this report. Uh. This this is the
context of this is the context from which this report spraying.
And so when we look at when we look at
(20:21):
the newest release, it is crucial that we do not
look at it as a single paper and I'm playing
a little bit of a trick on us here, uh,
but instead look at it as a new chapter in
a very very long story. And with all that in mind,
it is time to ask what's in this report? We'll
(20:41):
tell you afterward from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
There are actually two reports. You can only read one
unless you are a member of Congress. One of them
is classified was only given to Congress. So what you're
(21:03):
what you're hearing about when you're reading the news or
listening to shows like this is, in fact, that second
declassified report. It's like we said, it's only nine pages.
It's brevity has been a source of contention in the
UFO community. And when we say the UFO community, we're
talking about a huge swath of opinions perspectives, from die
(21:24):
hard proponents of specific narratives to hardcore skeptics of anything
that bears a whiff of woo, which is in the
skeptic world, wo is what you call nonsense, a woo
whiff you say whiff woo? Yes, okay? Who this makes
me think of like, I'm sorry to go pop culture analogy,
(21:46):
but like Frank Ocean like had this record that he
was supposed to release and it was gonna be this
big record for the label that he was on. So
instead he released this kind of underwhelming sort of arts
record and then that like fulfilled his contract, and then
the next week he at least the real one, which
was blonde um and it kind of got him sued.
But it's a it's it's pretty clever. It's like it's
(22:06):
like here, you guys, here's some red meat for you, you
you know, glom onto this for a minute, and then
we'll release the real one later. But in this case,
I don't think that holds up, because I don't know
they'll ever release the one that only Congress gets to see,
probably not for a long time. There may be a
redactive version somewhere down the line. But so this declassified
version refers to a hundred and forty four total cases,
(22:30):
so far fewer cases than blue Book, but you know
blue Book was longer, uh, and eighty of these cases
there are there's corroboration from multiple sensors, so the technology
is agreeing at least in part with the account of
an eye witness. Yeah, exactly, that's the most important part corroborated.
(22:53):
That's mind blowing and exciting, and it's unfortunately somewhat deflated
by the rest of the report. Just that fact alone
just kind of it shrinks like a balloon that's losing
air but and then falls over New Mexico. Anyway, but
there's I would say there's juicier stuff here too, because
there were at least eleven incidents or eleven side in
(23:15):
this report where American jets like warplanes almost hit unknown
objects while in the air mid air collisions. These things,
these these planes, by the way, are designed to be
nimble and fast, as fast, literally as as agile as
(23:35):
we can make them. We be the US government, and
equally as furious, right right, and these things ye, and
these things got they almost I'm cursing a lot in
this episode, but they almost got their shocked by something
that they couldn't identify. And remember, this group is only
studying reports coming from US military personnel or the intelligence community.
(24:00):
So these are highly qualified people who are making that
initial eye witness report, and then to have them backed
up by you know, some sensors, and then also to
have the witness say, who again is ridiculously qualified, say
I almost got hit by something I could not identify.
This is a step above civilian UFO reports calling into
(24:21):
the local radio station. It's seven steps, seventh order of magnitude,
more significant as the furious seven steps. So, perhaps most importantly,
in eighteen of these HUDT four cases, the objects sited
this this is another huge piece from my perspective. The
objects sited appear to have unusual flight characteristics. And why
(24:46):
is that important? Well, it doesn't necessarily mean aliens obviously,
the word alien does not occur in this in this report, instead,
it indicates the possibility of extant technology beyond the understanding
of the U. S. Military, which is the world's most
dangerous sophisticated known military force. And until the military knows
(25:07):
who created this, the nation as a whole is left
in a tremendously frightening position, which is interesting and then
such a differentiation from what we can typically kind of
write some of these sightings off as which is technology
that the military is very aware of but the civilians
are not aware of. This is again quite a few
cuts above that, like shoe feet just so there these
(25:33):
there these shoes to make it look like you're barefoot
to because like somebody might say, like, oh, who's run
off after this crime that this stamp heist, Like it
can't be that guy, he's barefoot. They still won't give
you service. Are you gonna have chest shirt? Next? Ben?
(25:54):
Was this? It's like you're also actually wearing your shirt,
but it looks like it just seems counterintuitive to But
I support you to the basses. It's not me, man,
It's not me. It's Uncle Sam. I'm just predicted. Now, guys,
stay tuned. Three crotch. Crotch pants are coming. Watch out.
It's not like it's not going to be It's either
is going to be exactly what you expected or not
(26:16):
at all what you expect, and both will be frightening.
We still'll be able to have a whole outfit, the
whole naked outfit and be fully clothed. So did you
help develop cyberpunk? I feel like you helped to do
that in some way, the concept of crotch pants really Wow,
you're talking about the famous Hangdong glitch. It's I think
(26:37):
it's a feature for a lot of people. At this point.
That was codenamed doc Holiday. That was that was her
research credit where it's do uh yeah, right, you're you're
absolutely right. There could be there doubtlessly is we know
for a factor's technology the US government possesses and multiple
other governments possessed that their public is not aware of.
(26:58):
And that doesn't necessarily mean it's all hazy or it's
all nefarious. It could just be a few years ahead
of you know, the kind of smartphone you can buy today,
slightly bigger thumb drive than we have available on the
market currently. Well, the real question here is whether or
not there are um compartmentalized parts of the government that
have technology that is far beyond what the US government
(27:21):
as a whole knows exists. Right, So we're glad you
said that. Right. People writing this report may have no
idea that some smaller group of R and D experts
have created something revolutionary that is so secret because it's
so dangerous, because it's compartmentalized by design to hide from
certain you know, officials that would maybe compromise the operation. Potentially,
(27:45):
compartmentalized intelligence is a real thing. It's what fiction refers
to when it says a need to know basis. So
it's possible that there's some kind of thing like skunk
works in the mix here, um, and we'll get to that.
I'm really glad you had that, man. The assessment is
doing its best to lay out groundwork assumptions, right, ground
floor assumptions, i should say, before they go to the sky.
(28:08):
And one of those. One of those is the idea
that all of these sightings have multiple explanations, and if
you look at them overall, you can't find one silver bullet.
Not everything was a deflating weather balloon, just as not
everything was you know, um ice crystals, so they too
get their heads around this. They group the sightings into
(28:31):
several broad categories, and we'll we'll walk through those briefly
with a direct quote from the report describing them. Number one,
this is the one they lead off with airborne clutter.
That's exactly what it sounds like. Although personally, for my money,
as the taxpayer, I wish they used the phrase sky
trash trash trash. This is not space trash. This is
(28:53):
sky trash, sky trash, so it's not operating in a
zero G situation. So where is this trash being launched
from and who is responsible? Well, many of them launched
from trees, as as it has in birds because birds
were included. And the sky trash that really checks for me,
(29:17):
really really tracks for me. I was thinking, like Scott,
I've I had a friend used to call pigeons sky rats.
I also think sky trash could be a great name
for a like a reality show once people start living
in a permanent airborne environment, you know, don't kid, let's
(29:37):
look kid ourselves. People would watch it. Eighties cartoon or
early nineties cartoons silver Hawks, remember hawks? Yeah, yeah, it
was different era cartoons. But we we have the exact
quote describing what they mean when they foolishly chose airborne
clutter over skytrash. Yeah, let's do that quickly. These objects
(29:59):
include bird balloons. That checks out, right, balloons, We've seen that.
That's sky trash, recreational unmanned aerial vehicles, and that's not
really trash. That's somebody's investment in hobby airborne debris like
plastic bags. That's so beautiful, So beautiful though. I mean, yes,
that muddle is seen and can affect an operator's ability
(30:20):
to identify true targets, such as an enemy aircraft just
flying plastic bags over the Pacific Ocean. So subhetting subheading
for this, people are filthy. Yeah, we managed to put
trash in the sky. Yeah, I mean, there's certainly trash
in the sea. Why shouldn't there be trash on the sky.
(30:40):
Then we head into the slightly science e or sounding
natural atmospheric phenomenon, which would be you know weather, Yes, yes,
it would be weather. It's it's a kind of miscellaneous
category for a bunch of phenomenon that's already understood by science.
In importantly, and this is this is in defense of
(31:02):
the witnesses. Importantly, in some cases this kind of stuff
can be pretty rare, you know, like ball lightning for instances,
somewhat rare. You know, it's it's freaky if you actually
see it. So this ups the likelihood of some of
these things, not all, but some of these things being misidentified. Yes,
(31:23):
and we have another quote for this one as well. Quote.
Natural atmospheric phenomena includes ice crystals, moisture, and thermal fluctuations
that may register on some infrared and radar systems. Again
a k A weather. Yeah, but as a thermal fluctuation
going to be noticed by a pilot, it depends on
the machinery he's flying with, right, or the equipment I
(31:45):
guess so. But it's just in many of these cases,
we know that a witness statement has a lot to
do with what's reported, and there's generally or in many cases,
I guess that's not true. I was going to say,
in many cases the pilot is report seeing something, But
again there are other cases where a pilot is reporting
noticing something, like you said, on a radar that a
(32:07):
thermal pocket may actually see. So waiting at quick question,
you can't see an infrared No, not yet. I'm going
to keep going to predator school. Dude, You'll you'll eventually
don't feel bad. Dude. You know I'm color blind. I'm
just winging it at traffic lights, so I hear you.
(32:28):
I mean, ocular implants are definitely on my list, you know,
So we'll see that's what you think. You have to
think about that now that LASIC is freely available for people, like,
is it the like, what a kick in the pants
If you get LASI and then these new kick ass
ocular implants coming, well, they'll probably be ad supported. It's
certainly in the more extreme version of buying the latest
(32:50):
like video game system and then a newer, better one
comes out. Oh my god, may get flear sick. That's
the latest surgery with I talked about that on the
last UH Listener Mail episode. Fleair the company that makes
these cameras that are a lot smaller than you would think,
and potentially they've got another line in the works that
(33:11):
can go right into your eyeballs. Um, what do we
have next on the list though, guys? Yeah, this is
this is a pretty well done segue. We're talking tech
and we're also going back to the point you brought
up earlier at the third category, is U s g
u S government or industry developmental programs. Now it's getting
a little more juicy, they say, quote, some u A
(33:33):
P observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs
by US entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that
these systems accounted for any of the u A reports
we collected, Meaning that this is the beginning of one
of the asks from from the report, because the report
is asking for stuff just as it's um, just as
(33:57):
it's concluding some things, and so they're building a case
for these asks will get from these questions, These demands
will get to at the end, and not demands request.
Is this referring to like R and D for corporations
that aren't government related? Is that what this is implying? Quite,
It's we have to be careful of the language. It's
(34:17):
not not saying that. It's not not saying that like
Wendy's or McDonald's has a secret blimp program. Oh no,
be blimpy. How did I admittend know we're keeping it
in we're keeping in it. It would be blimpy though
for the record, I mean, but yeah, you're right, this
could mean, um, this could mean a non governmental entity.
(34:38):
But they're they're probably without reading too uch and too intent,
they're probably referring to the existence of classified R and
D with places like Lockheed or other private public partnerships
or private slash government partnerships. And what they're saying is
it is possible that they ran into one or more
(34:58):
classified projects concerning technology most people don't know about yet,
and if those projects exist, whoever runs them did not
think this was important enough to reveal their existence. Oh,
you compromise their secrecy. Listen to that. We were unable
to confirm again, Okay, you were unable to confirm that. Yeah,
(35:21):
that's not You're not You're not saying anything here. Do
you think this is one of the more telling passages
in the report? It is one of them. Yeah, it
is one. I just love to picture, like someone someone
calling on the phone to some shadowy like shadowy office
building or warehouse somewhere and they're like, Hello, this is
(35:42):
blah blah blah from you. Uh, can you can you confirm?
Can you confirm that citing number one thirty two is
indeed evidence of Project Shoe Feet And then they're like
wrong number, click, that could have happened. Probably not with Shoefie,
but it could have happened. But we also know that
the government can get all up in your business if
(36:03):
you have a patent that threatens national security, right or
or so. It's interesting that they didn't go further into that. Well,
we're gonna talk about one of the reasons why you
and I and Ben and everybody else don't get to
know everything that exists in this report. Sure, yeah, I
(36:23):
mean by necessity, you could say the government has to
treat members of its own public sometimes as though they
themselves are agents of foreign powers. It's an ugly necessity,
but it's true. And that brings us to the fourth
category they have. This is probably one of the more
frightening ones, foreign adversary systems. This is like, this is
(36:45):
what politicians like Marco Rubio we're talking about, and then
rightly frightens a lot of people. They say, specifically some
unidentified aerial phenomena, maybe technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation,
or a non her mental entity. I should have mentioned
that earlier, such a tricky phrase. Non governmental entity literally
(37:06):
anything that is not one of the hundred nineties seven
something recognized un nations. That's a lot of stuff. That's
stuff like uh, you know, um that stuff like you
know Lever, that's what. Yeah, whatever. The biggest companies you
can think of are any of the private space companies
(37:26):
that specifically what I'm thinking about. Oh yeah, it's a
really good point. Map. Yeah, that's a great point. And
so why is this disturbing? Well, it's because the US
spends a ton of money, blood and time trying to
stay as up to date as possible and the capabilities
of rival powers, and we're not like, go back to
our phone call. Example. This isn't just a case of
(37:47):
some some asset calling US authorities, right, somebody who's like
working at a factory somewhere else and calling authorities and saying, hey,
so and so has invented a new kind kind of
ballistic missile, a new kind of i cb M, so
watch out. It's more along the lines of a bunch
of different people in the in the U S intelligence
(38:08):
ecosystem saying like, hey, we've been monitoring this professor's work,
their latest research, their recent travel, and we also noticed
and they start to do it kind of a Charlie
Day thing. We've also noticed that there's an increase in
imports of you know whatever, and a retooling of this
factory that had previously been mothballed and inserted this fact
(38:30):
and this fact and this fact, and then they corroberate
it and they say, we predict Country X is working on,
you know, a ballistic missile of blah blah blah type,
and unless we do anything, they're gonna have a prototype
in about two years. It's predictive. That's how the system
is supposed to work. Yeah, that's that's not terrifying. I
(38:50):
mean it's also comforting, but it's terrifying. It's comforted ter
arra tear tearum thing for never mind, we will work
on this later. Um. Yeah. No. It reminds me of
like I guess, the idea and maybe this is more
(39:10):
the private industry thing, but I picture like a scientist,
like a rogue scientist working on something in a lab
and the government gets wind of it, and then the
men in black come and take him away, you know,
like will a Wilhelm Reich type situation. The idea that
he's working on some sort of mystical rainmaking machine that
could threaten uh, you know, the government in somewhere. Yeah, exactly.
(39:33):
And this. This means that if there is a earthly
technology made by a foreign power, and it's something that
remains inexplicable after repeated direct observation, it doesn't seem to
be deterred by any conventional countermeasures, then that means there
would have been innumerable indicators of the research and the
(39:56):
construction leading up to those observations. So that means multiple
agencies would have had to miss some pretty blatant signals
over a fairly long period of time. And if that's true,
then that means we have no idea what else that
enemy power could be working on. And this point right here,
these foreign adversary systems, this is why there's any money
(40:21):
for for this to be written. This is why anyone
in the government and military and intelligence community is actually
interested in these reports. It's because of the potential for
that situation that Ben just described. Yeah, exactly right. That's
what a lot of people who have looked me absolutely
not believe in the existence of extra terrestrials or the
(40:44):
existence of other non human intelligent life. This is the
thing that keeps those folks up at night. But this
isn't the end of the report. We're gonna pause for
a word from our sponsor, and then let's get weird
with it and we're back. There is one more category,
(41:05):
my favorite, yes, mine as well. No, it is other Other.
You knew it was coming, folks. Other. That's right. Just
like Project blue Book, this report keeps an empty seat
at the explanation table, and they are incredibly careful to
never say alien, to never be like little Green Men
or anything like that. But other could literally mean anything.
(41:29):
So my pitches, what about sky wizards? Can we just
please have like some like this has been described as
the sky Wizard by pilots observing the phenomenon. Clearly, the
sky wizards could really help with the sky trash problem.
You know, they could just like de materialize that with
a swoop of their sky wands. So I went through
this thing where I was just writing down funny phrases
(41:52):
that had the words sky and the those are those
are the two that made it sky trash and sky
Wizards love it. Want arc though, like energy beings? Yeah,
I want that. I want ar cons just made of
pure glowing light. Yeah. They're really really good at destroying
zerg structures. I don't know, that's what I've generally aware
of them. For I thought you were going like ar
(42:13):
cons from the invisibles, from a microscopic universe. Oh no,
I was firmly in the StarCraft universe. Okay, I was
wondering which you were playing in. We're in all of them.
We're in a nerd multiverse. But let's let's take a
look at how this report. How this report tackles it's
most controversial category here. Well, it frames it up in
(42:38):
a way that they hope, I imagine we can wrap
our tiny, you know, civilian brains around um. It says, quote,
although most of the UAP described in our data set
probably remain unidentified due to limited data or challenges to collection, processing,
or analysis, we may require additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect,
(42:59):
on analyze, and characterize some of them. We would group
such objects in this category pending scientific advances that allowed
us to better understand them. The U A P t
F intends to focus additional analysis on the small number
of cases where a U A P appeared to display
unusual flight characteristics. Remember from earlier or signature management now
(43:25):
now ben signature, this is like thermal right, like like
like like what it's putting off? What kind of energy
it's putting off right. This This refers in general to
uh to the idea that some of these things, some
of these like objects you could call them, were emitting
interference signals, or they were they were admitting stuff that
(43:50):
the the jets, the aircraft, the known aircraft could detect,
and that the way these signatures may have been deployed,
either to obscure their appearance on sensors or to um
impair the function of those sensors may something about it
(44:10):
may have appeared purposeful. They're not gonna They're not gonna
explicitly say that. The scariest thing here is that one
sentence they put in the middle, we may require additional
scientific knowledge, just like Blue Book, that that's why we
said this would be important. We got there. They're saying humanity,
(44:34):
or at the very least the humans of the entirety
of the U. S. Government, don't know enough about science
to explain what's happening. That's unfortunately pretty anti sky Wizard,
but I think it's I think it's a profound point.
It's an incredible admission. It's almost like saying we don't
(44:54):
know enough about life on Earth to explain or prove
the existence of God. You know what I mean, it's
it's a very interesting line or it's a very interesting
statement of a thing that I think we all know exists,
but it's not something you typically see the government copying to. Yeah,
it's literally this thing is advanced beyond our understanding of
(45:17):
this moment of current understanding for us, at least on
this team that are generating these reports, right or on
this on this team is generating this report, and on
the people who are observing these things, at least those
eight team that had weird flight patterns and whatever other
handful that was doing the signals stuff. I mean, that's
(45:37):
and I think that's as close as we're going to
get to somebody's visiting us, right right. Yeah. And they're
also they're also importantly noting there's a very small sample
size available. They have a lack of the data that
they would ideally have for all these reports. But they're
they're admitting there is a mystery afoot and that that
is one of the biggest revelations of this report. They
(46:00):
go in the detail about it, this is the moment
you should freak out. By the way, if you are
a fan of disclosure, They say some U A P.
Appeared to remain stationary and winds aloft, move against the winds,
maneuver abruptly, or move at a considerable speed without discernible
means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military
aircraft systems processed radio frequency energy associated with UAP sidings.
(46:25):
That's what they mean by signature management. And then they
start to come to some conclusions. Perhaps most importantly, they
explicitly say that whatever this is, it poses an active
hazard to flight. Means it means that some of these
are physical objects. These are not just misidentified pretty lights
in the sky. And then they say there could be
(46:47):
a broader danger if they represented uh sophisticated, unstoppable surveillance
of military activities. But on one good note, they say, well,
it's kind of a good note. It goes back to
your earlier note about language there, Matt. The report finds
no evidence so far that u A P or tech
from a foreign power, and then it cites constraints on
(47:11):
its ability to properly investigate the sightings, offer suggestions on
how to improve the research. So you say, what to improve?
Now we get to the request that they have, Yeah,
and they and they do have some requests in and
we can probably argue a little bit about how actually
needed these things are. I just wanted to say, um.
(47:34):
In the report, they do point out that many of
these sightings occur around active military operations and or um
tests and practice runs and these kinds of things. Again
likely because and they even say this in report, likely
because these are military personnel. So when you know, when
they've got a jet out running a test flight or something,
(47:55):
that's when they encounter something. Or if they're doing, um,
some kind of war game, that's when they encounter something
because they're actually outdoing stuff. They're not just you know,
sitting on a base somewhere with some binoculars. And my
whole point here is just to say that it would
make sense that it would be considered more threatening by
(48:15):
the government because these things are occurring when military operations
are occurring. That makes sense. Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
So this is so they see a clear potential for danger,
right and there makes everything makes you want Everything that
they indicate or allude to really makes you wonder what's
(48:36):
in that classified report. So here's what they want to improve,
and they were public with the stuff they want, Uh,
they want better reporting standards across all the armed services.
They want more consolidation of data, and they want deeper analysis.
They want aviators to have less stigma about reporting strange
stuff in the sky. And they also want these aviators
(48:56):
not to halt test or training when they see some
the unusual, but to keep eyes on it and come
back with as much information as they can. That's a
that's a behavior that would have to be learned, because
you know, in general, when you see stuff like this,
you're you're supposed to you're probably gonna halt what you're doing, right, Yeah,
(49:16):
And then there's a huge deal removing the stigma, because
that's one of the major reasons for a long time
in the military why you just wouldn't talk about it
if you were a pilot and you saw something is
because you would get ridiculed and who knows, maybe even
in trouble because you're not seeing things clearly, or you're
seeing things that aren't there. Um, it's just it. If
(49:38):
we can get rid of that, then we're going to
get a lot more than four reports real fast, true, true,
and they'll be reports of the same caliber. Right. These
will be from experts, from professionals in the military. They
also I thought This was pretty smart. They also want
to expand data collection and analogy is through algorithms, so
(50:02):
being able to run analysis that allows them to locate
u AP hot spots or clusters if those exist, and
then to identify like a baseline measure for unusual stuff.
That's hugely important because that would let you know if
activity was picking up. And then, of course money when
you we're not joking, they want money. Like a lot
(50:24):
of government initiatives, they definitely need more funding. And they
propose three plans, a UAP collection strategy and R and
D Technical ROADBAP, and an overall program plan to help
figure out where that money should go. And it sounds
like a bit of a cash grab, sure, but it's
not unfair because those steps that we just outlined need
a ton of coordination and a ton of funding, and
(50:47):
each each thing they need comes with a price tag,
and that that is where the report leaves off. Right.
There is a need and we we know we can
make a plan for our next steps, but we need support,
we need funding, we need more information. And when we
get to the question of what happens now, well, the
(51:09):
figurative UFO is still up in the air. Uh. These
were these things, whatever these UAP phenomenon or reports are,
they probably didn't stop. It's not like they just petered off.
This is an ongoing event, and honestly, if we're gonna
be cynical, we're gonna talk brass tacks about it. The
two big deciding factors are how credible a threat policymakers
(51:33):
see this as being and how public reaction goes. That's
going to determine the political classes opinion on the investigation.
As much of a bummer as it might be to
admit it, that's not really a bummer. If supporting further
research feels like a ticket to reelection, yeah, most politicians
are going to support it. I I you know, you
(51:54):
could say that's depressing because it's clearly self motivated, but
it's also representing the will of their instituents, you know.
So can we really fault them? I don't know. If
we can't know, I don't think so. But the biggest
takeaway from me is something that that George Knapp really
really hit on when he was reporting on this for
(52:15):
Oh gosh, I can't remember what it was for. I
know it's a Las Vegas. It's eight News now in
Las Vegas. That's where he's reporting, and he's from Mystery Wire.
You may recognize the name George Knapp. But one of
the big things he pointed out is that this nine
pages or six actual pages that we got to look
at that we mentioned at the top of this are
(52:36):
nothing compared to the thirty pages that Congress scott. And
if this thing does get funding and this program goes
on for let's say a decade, man fingers across, let's
say a decade, imagine all the information that would be
gathered and then we'd get at least an eighteen page report.
(52:57):
Why why did they owe us the nine Oh is
this strong word? But like what compelled them to give
us the nine pager in the first place, other than
like leaks over be right? But I mean that's it.
It's just literally like, Okay, people have questions. This is
like a public issue, an issue of public concern. We
need to tell the people something. It was a pork
(53:18):
and it was a piece of pork in one of
the bills they got passed for COVID relief. Correct. I
think that's how this that's why they had to give
a report. They were mandated given a time frame it's
not as like it feels like a good faith effort.
But again, we're in the same boat as you because
(53:41):
they are they're saying they don't have enough information, and
that's what we're saying too, And Nap is absolutely right.
You have to wonder what's in the classified report. There
may be specifics in there that changed the course of conversation,
but it's tough to guess whether there would be anything
in or that would be considered revelatory by the average
(54:04):
member of the public. Right the classified report, you know,
what's most likely is that it contains other classified information
about US censor capabilities. That's something you know, the average
member of the public probably wouldn't care about, but something
that intelligence in a foreign country would be very interested
in knowing. And then surveillance methods maybe maybe possible secret technology,
(54:30):
classified technology, or maybe it's just there are specificities unredacted
about the individuals reporting, you know, their names, things that
they probably don't want to have released to the public
because they don't want you ethologists hounding them at home,
you know what I mean, Uh, it could be any
of those. In my favorite world, you guys, I like
(54:51):
to think that instead of a thirty page report. What
it really is is like a nice go get them tiger,
let to congress from actual aliens, you know, doing a
good job, got a little balloon and saucer and then
you know, no one will believe you. Yes, they're written
(55:12):
language is like seventeen thousand font so it's just one
character on thirty pages there it is character sort of
like a like a like like a serial killer, you know,
taunting the police kind of, you know, or maybe they're
just trying to reach us about Earth's extended warranty, or
(55:33):
just the fact that like, hey, maybe you know climate change.
I hope it's written exactly like that. Or they're they're
paying the billionaires to convince all of us to go
to Mars so that they can ever that's what it is.
What I love about this plan is how straightforward it is.
Yeah uh yeah, I mean we're joking a little bit,
(55:56):
but we we hope you've enjoyed here in this kind
of what a one to this report as well as
perhaps most crucially it's indications for the future. At this point,
we passed the UFO torch to you, fellow listeners. What
do you think is this a genuine accurate assessment released
in good faith. Is this a wag the dog a
(56:19):
distraction from something else? Is this the tip of a
larger classified iceberg? What happens next? Let us know. We
try to be easy to find online. If you have
a spaceship, just fly over to Atlanta. You know we'll
we'll take you out. We got a pretty big air
airport here you might have heard about. But yeah. You
(56:41):
can find us on the internet the usual places of note.
We are on Twitter and Facebook and also YouTube as
conspiracy stuff. Um. You can also find us on Instagram
at Conspiracy Stuff Show. That's right. If you want to
use that little rectangular thing with a black mirror on it,
you can also reach us that way with your mouth God,
(57:04):
I love, I hate love saying that. You can call us.
Our number is one eight three three st d w
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(57:26):
us know if we can use your name and voice
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(58:02):
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Ben Bowlin
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