Planet Earth is not being visited by creatures from outer space.
Earlier this year, a former US Air Force intelligence officer made a personal report to Congress "about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin." His name is David C. Grusch. The article linked and quoted above is the one that broke the story of his whistleblowing after major news outlets demurred. It appeared on a speculative-science website called The Debrief. As it came to be more widely discussed, much was made of the fact that Mr Grusch was an intelligence insider and had been described as "beyond reproach" by a former associate. This was an early warning about the tenor of debate to follow: a willingness to argue from authority. Even "people who should know" are supposed to convince us of what they know about the matter at hand. Even people of certified character have an obligation to deal in demonstrable facts like the dodgiest of us. If Mr Grusch's assertions were supported by solid facts, those facts would be of such enormous news value that he could hardly reveal them fast enough to keep ahead of investigative journalists. In fact, three months have passed without a lead on any substantive evidence from any source. Here, it would be as well to quote from the original article on The Debrief at some length.
Associates who vouched for Grusch said his information was highly sensitive, providing evidence that materials from objects of non-human origin are in the possession of highly secret black programs. Although locations, program names, and other specific data remain classified, the Inspector General and intelligence committee staff were provided with these details. Several current members of the recovery program spoke to the Inspector General's office and corroborated the information Grusch had provided for the classified complaint.
Grusch left the government on April 7, 2023, in order, he said, to advance government accountability through public awareness. He remains well-supported within intelligence circles, and numerous sources have vouched for his credibility.
"His assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct, as is the indisputable realization that at least some of these technologies of unknown origin derive from non-human intelligence," said Karl Nell, the retired Army Colonel who worked with Grusch on the UAP Task Force.
That's a lot of grist for the mill of argument from authority. But even if we take it all at face value, what are we to think? This is highly sensitive information about highly secret black programs — and yet Mr Grusch can divulge it with the cooperation of people involved in the programs, and without any disavowal by their higher-ups. The retired colonel who assures us that Mr Grusch is beyond reproach is himself the source of a declaration that "at least some of these technologies ... derive from non-human intelligence" — and yet his character reference should matter. Meanwhile, most news organizations are just teasing the story along, and the rest of us aren't milling in the streets clamoring to know what sort of threat the extraterrestrials may pose. At some level, nobody is taking this at face value.
Mr Grusch has said that he can't talk openly about specifics because they're classified, and yet it seems that the existence and essence of these "highly secret black programs" is not. He allows that he's not the primary source of any of his information but, rather, has had it confided to him at various removes. His informants have gone so far as to claim — he says — that government investigators possess biological remains of "non-human" beings (a term he prefers to alien or extraterrestrial) found along with crashed flying machines. Keeping all that in mind, let's stop and question whether sophisticated people would entertain his testimony if they weren't looking beyond its face value.
Consider the number six. Without context, it seems small. If we're told it represents a distance of 6,000,000 miles, it becomes staggering. If we're told it represents six light-years (roughly the distance, if memory serves*, between Earth and the nearest potentially earth-like planet), it loses its power to stagger because the string of zeros is replaced by a unit which we can't hope to comprehend. We're not talking about flying saucers nipping over from Mars.
The notion of a spacecraft no bigger than a terrestrial aircraft traveling a light-year while sustaining life within it, even in suspended animation, is a non-starter. Why would a highly advanced civilization even wish to attempt an interstellar probe with a live crew instead of relying on its excellent technologies of automation and artificial intelligence? In planning any space mission, take away the warm bodies and you simplify your task immensely. It's common knowledge that NASA carries on manned space flight mainly because it captures the imagination of taxpayers and politicians.
Now, it's possible to imagine — just idly imagine, without attending to difficulties — some civilization making an exodus from a doomed world in a gigantic artificial habitat, with countless generations embarked on the journey since time out of mind. When such a "mother ship" reached the vicinity of Earth, it might dispatch reconnaissance craft similar to the objects that pilots say they've observed. But in that case, why haven't astronomers detected the mother ship? Why hasn't anyone detected incoming reconnaissance craft, if we can detect them when they're in our atmosphere? And why do they crash at an apparently much higher rate than airliners; more like experimental aircraft being test-flown?
No, it's a safe bet that Earth is not being visited by creatures from outer space. So why is Congress investigating, and why has the Pentagon recently moved toward greater transparency in its handling of aerial phenomena? Two possible explanations come to mind.
One possibility is that the government, with the witting or unwitting cooperation of David Grusch, is acting to soften up public opinion for the revelation that terrestrial actors have been getting away with aggressive spying and probing or, what seems more likely, unregulated testing within US territory. Given the many reports of the strange objects' presence contrasted with few if any reports of their approach, they must be operating from domestic bases on the ground. This would be of interest to a congressional committee. At the same time, a portion of the general public would feel relieved after having been teased with visions of space invaders.
The other possibility, which does not exclude that of unregulated testing, is corruption. Mr Grusch, speaking of programs that deal with unidentified aerial phenomena, has stated, "Individuals on these UAP programs approached me in my official capacity and disclosed their concerns regarding a multitude of wrongdoings, such as illegal contracting against the Federal Acquisition Regulations and other criminality and the suppression of information across a qualified industrial base and academia." Lord Acton would probably be open to the idea that secrecy tends to corrupt and absolute secrecy corrupts absolutely. A long-running "black" program with labyrinthine funding could reach such extremes of corruption, autonomy, and the entanglement of "a qualified industrial base and academia" that reining it in must involve public exposure. The essence of the story may turn out to be that somebody has a reverse-engineering budget but no reverse-engineering work to do.
As for those organic remains found with crashed vehicles, the studied use of the term non-human in preference to alien or extraterrestrial may mean we should be thinking of primates used in testing the effects of those sharp turns at high speed that observers often report. Then again, all the sensational details — the organic remains, the astonishing technology, the "unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures" — may be products of an overextended game of telephone.
That is the view from the end of the limb. If it turns out that Earth has in fact been scouted for invasion, the laugh will be on me. In any case, though, it's a mistake to conflate the surmise that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe with the surmise that it sometimes travels from there to here. The two notions are worlds apart.
* Memory did not serve. The distance is 4.5 light years, as noted by Justin E.H. Smith in "Where do aliens come from?"
