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Sci-Fi Government

Congress Admits UFOs Not 'Man-Made,' Says 'Threats' Increasing 'Exponentially' (vice.com) 286

After years of revelations about strange lights in the sky, first hand reports from Navy pilots about UFOs, and governmental investigations, Congress seems to have admitted something startling in print: it doesn't believe all UFOs are "man-made." Motherboard reports: Buried deep in a report that's an addendum to the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, a budget that governs America's clandestine services, Congress made two startling claims. The first is that "cross-domain transmedium threats to the United States national security are expanding exponentially." The second is that it wants to distinguish between UFOs that are human in origin and those that are not: "Temporary nonattributed objects, or those that are positively identified as man-made after analysis, will be passed to appropriate offices and should not be considered under the definition as unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena," the document states.

The admission is stunning chiefly because, as more information about the U.S. government's study of UFOs has become public, many politicians have stopped just short of claiming the unidentified objects were extraterrestrial or extradimensional in origin. The standard line is typically that, if UFOs exist, then they're likely advanced -- although human-made -- vehicles. Obama refused to confirm the existence of aliens but did say that people have seen a lot of strange stuff in the sky lately when asked directly on The Late Show with James Corden, for example. But now Congress seems to want to specifically distinguish between objects that are "man-made" and those that are not. The admission is stunning chiefly because, as more information about the U.S. government's study of UFOs has become public, many politicians have stopped just short of claiming the unidentified objects were extraterrestrial or extradimensional in origin.

A large question, of course, is why Congress is seemingly admitting this now, in public. After all, lawmakers are privy to classified information that the general public isn't. "It strains credulity to believe that lawmakers would include such extraordinary language in public legislation without compelling evidence," Marik von Rennenkampff, an Obama-era DoD official, said in an op-ed in The Hill about the budget. According to the op-ed, the comments were first noticed by UFO researcher Douglas Johnson. "This implies that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee believe (on a unanimous, bipartisan basis) that some UFOs have non-human origins," von Rennenkampff continued. "After all, why would Congress establish and task a powerful new office with investigating non-'man-made' UFOs if such objects did not exist?" "Make no mistake: One branch of the American government implying that UFOs have non-human origins is an explosive development."

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Congress Admits UFOs Not 'Man-Made,' Says 'Threats' Increasing 'Exponentially'

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  • by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @02:08AM (#62816695) Homepage

    Some of them are made by the laws of physics, not man, especially the camera artifacts.

    • ...but who made the laws of physics?

      • by Goose In Orbit ( 199293 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @03:16AM (#62816807)

        I did!

        (Given that everything else is "my fault"... I might as well start taking credit for something)

        • People have been telling ME everything's my fault. Perhaps together, we share blame for all the fault everywhere in the universe.

          • by chill ( 34294 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @07:04AM (#62817147) Journal

            Oh, so you're married, too? According to my wife, everything is MY fault. Welcome to the club!

        • The laws of the universe being created by a goose explains a lot, actually. I always suspected that the creator was an asshole, and now we've got confirmation.
      • by quenda ( 644621 )

        ...but who made the laws of physics?

        Laws of maths plus the anthropic principle.
        And what made that? Easy, it is math all the way down.

    • by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @05:39AM (#62817007)

      Thanks for mentioning the camera artifacts specifically. I'd include canopy reflections and radar glitches, and say that together, they've probably been responsible for more UFO sightings by competent airborne observers than anything else.

      • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @07:02AM (#62817137)

        And the moon. We know that because we can calculate the position of the moon at any time and date and many UFO sightings match perfectly.

        The moon already messes with our sense of perspective (see "moon illusion"), and in certain conditions, it may not be obvious what that weird light really is.

        Note that pilots often make terrible observers for UFOs, for good reasons. They are mostly trained to see other aircraft, that is, objects in order of 10m in size moving 100s of km/h. This is of course because these are the most important objects to look for and react to when you are flying a plane. But it also means that without a reference, pilots will instinctively assume the thing they see flying are aircraft-sized. Small things like insects and huge things like celestial bodies can throw them off, especially when seen for a short amount of time and under a heavy workload. Remember that a pilot's job is to fly the plane, and that's the context for any observation they make.

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        Oh yes. Just not the investigated and reviewed incidents being talked about here which are confirmed by multiple instruments and observers.

    • by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @06:34AM (#62817071)
      we know about how solid objects move in the atmosphere, I have to wonder if it might not be a solid object. If something is moving so fast that there should at least be a shockwave, and there isn't, then it appears to dip below the water without even disturbing the surface, why would anyone assume it is a solid object?

      Should we ignore the possibility that it is an actual physical object? No, that would also be silly. But it shouldn't be the primary, let alone exclusive, hypothesis.

      • by The Real Dr John ( 716876 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @07:47AM (#62817241) Homepage

        "cross-domain transmedium threats to the United States national security are expanding exponentially."

        What people need to really think about is that the government is in the business of threat amplification and threat fabrication. In order to justify obscene military budgets, there must be threats. The bigger and more unknown the threat, the more money is needed for the military. I would hope that eventually everyone would start to realize they are being played. You won't ever get universal healthcare if all the money goes into the military to protect us against fabricated threats.

  • by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @02:12AM (#62816699)
    Not implying it's fucking aliens, for which there is literally zero basis. How dumb is the author of that Vice article / how dumb does he believe everyone else is?
    • by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @02:19AM (#62816707) Homepage

      It's all fun and games until you've got a giant alien satellite dish coming out of your asshole.

    • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @02:28AM (#62816717)

      Not implying it's fucking aliens, for which there is literally zero basis. How dumb is the author of that Vice article / how dumb does he believe everyone else is?

      He's a UFO True Believer. Everything he reads or hears is filtered through that lens. He probably thinks the increase in the price of milk right now is somehow tied to aliens. He probably thinks Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast really was an alien invasion with the "radio show" explanation being a back-filled cover-up by the government.

      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by Freischutz ( 4776131 )

        Not implying it's fucking aliens, for which there is literally zero basis. How dumb is the author of that Vice article / how dumb does he believe everyone else is?

        He's a UFO True Believer. Everything he reads or hears is filtered through that lens. He probably thinks the increase in the price of milk right now is somehow tied to aliens. He probably thinks Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast really was an alien invasion with the "radio show" explanation being a back-filled cover-up by the government.

        Let's also not forget that this is the same US Congress whose members voted for war with Iraq because they thought the Iraqis had mobile bio weapons labs and nuclear weapons. After years of searching the US found nothing.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          The fabled existenceof bio wepons and nukes was a deliberately planted lie made up specifically to provide a pretext for invasion. Nothing was found because nothing was ever there.

          The only thing that suprised me was they didn't plant anything themselves after the invasion.

          • by Entrope ( 68843 )

            And by "nothing was ever there", you mean that Iraq never used nerve agents [wikipedia.org] against Iran, did not later have chemical and nuclear weapons programs [wikipedia.org], and Saddam Hussein did not maintain deliberate ambiguity [wikipedia.org] about whether those programs continued into the 21st century.

            • And that Syria subsequently used WMDs (as labeled by Obama) that easily could have been transferred from Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion, as multiple experts warned at the time.
          • They already had a pretext for invasion: the United States had been in a shooting war with Iraq since the first war, which never ended (see: no-fly zone).

          • by GoTeam ( 5042081 )

            The fabled existenceof bio wepons and nukes was a deliberately planted lie made up specifically to provide a pretext for invasion. Nothing was found because nothing was ever there.

            The only thing that suprised me was they didn't plant anything themselves after the invasion.

            Exact same thing is happening here. Except the aliens are actually planting the WGDs (weapons of galactic destruction) to justify their upcoming invasion!

            • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

              Ridiculous. Obviously these are Atlanteans who have a parallel and far more advanced society beneath the sea floor.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        While I am NOT asserting the existence of little green men, you sir have clearly swallowed the fruits of decades of government disinformation.

        That isn't a conspiracy theory anymore but declassified fact from the project bluebook materials. Moreover it is a common strategy employed by the CIA (with many declassified examples now) as well and likely anyone engaged in information warfare. Whenever they don't want something taken seriously they leak strawman variations of the narrative which are completely off

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @02:31AM (#62816725)

      I love this quote from TFA:

      "It strains credulity to believe that lawmakers would include such extraordinary language in public legislation without compelling evidence,"

      That is the stupidest thing I have read so far today.

    • I wouldn't exactly call someone writing clickbait articles dumb. Dishonest, yes, but not dumb.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Eunomion ( 8640039 )
        This is a lot worse than clickbait. This is actively trying to concoct a total fantasy out of thin air.

        I can't imagine the kind of schizo fringe-thinking it would take to see "not man-made" (as in, natural weather phenomena) and read it as (alien technology). And I also can't imagine being so misanthropic as to try slipping such a thing by otherwise literate audiences.
    • Not implying it's fucking aliens, for which there is literally zero basis. How dumb is the author of that Vice article / how dumb does he believe everyone else is?

      He wants to believe!

    • It's citing a James fucking Corden interview. 'nuff said.

    • by Kisai ( 213879 )

      It's not aliens, but whatever it is, the people observing it are too stupid to recognize what it is.

      Lens artifacts and hot-spots on the electronics is likely the most reasonable answer for lights that appear to move strangely. If they are really "UFO"'s there would be atmospheric turbulence if they were moving and have a shape that isn't perfectly aerodynamic. If they are teleporting, they wouldn't appear to be moving.

      Like my entire beef with the UFO conspiracy bull, is that damn near everything can be attr

      • Not only were some of the provided governnment UFO videos clearly a lens or sensor artifact, but their excuses for why they don't have clear video are shit. They claim pilots are seeing these things all the time, but they haven't managed to put high res cameras on any planes and get them up there and photograph any of them? It's bullshit for dumbfucks through and through.

      • by GoTeam ( 5042081 )

        It's not aliens, but whatever it is, the people observing it are too stupid to recognize what it is.... I assure you that defects in the lenses, CCD's and CMOS sensors will be responsible for all (emphasis added by me the p) the "UFO" sightings.

        Calling them stupid might be a bit harsh. There are still natural phenomena that aren't well understood. Red "lightning" sprites would probably freak most people out and be hard to explain by someone who'd never heard of it. Same with ball lightning and rare atmospheric events caused by things like temperature inversion layers.

        Now if you see rare phenomena and immediately think "aliens!", then "stupid" might be a correct description of the person reporting the event. :)

      • Not necessarily. Consider how many sightings are associated with the presence of nuclear material - near power plants, missile silos, and aircraft carriers. Well, we know radioactive material can make things glow, so maybe that isn't a surprise. We also know that a piece of metal hurtling through a magnetic field produces an electric charge, which could perhaps turn into glowing balls of ions that move in the strangest ways. Hell, people can create little balls of plasma in a microwave oven, so what sor
    • Not implying it's fucking aliens, for which there is literally zero basis. How dumb is the author of that Vice article / how dumb does he believe everyone else is?

      Have you seen what people believe today? I'd say he probably over estimates the intelligence of the reader.

  • Translation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @02:25AM (#62816713)

    We think we should up the defense budget, but saying it's because the Russians go caca-cuckoo again won't go down too well because of the conspiracy nuts who think that Putin is the next version of the saviour for some weird reason, so let the conspiracy nuts duke it out with each other by saying it's because of aliens.

    With a hint of luck some of the rednecks will think we're talking about Mexicans and are in favor 'cause of that.

  • No-one can question the word of a Congressman.

    • A congressman is a lawyer that was SO shit at his job that he couldn't even con people into hiring him.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      You're not helping. Got 10 mod points to spare, but I'm replying specifically to help you improve your contributions. Context free cynicism that would fit in most any other comment section doesn't mark you as intelligent, rather as worthless.

      Dud you want "informative" here? "Insightful "? Or just "reactionary cynic"?

  • by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @02:43AM (#62816749)
    Some UFO are not man made. They are venus, they are reflection of the moon, they are bird seen from altitude with parallax, etc... Not man made. And some we can't find anymore the explanation because there is no way anymore to get details , not man made. None of it means any UFO are from extraterrestrial intelligence. In fact there has not been so far any UFO for which extraterrestrial intelligence would be the most probable explanation : so far ALL UFO have a more probable explanation in the mundane. There is nothing whatsoever new here. Wake me up when the most probable explanation is intelligent extraterrestrial until then it is just a bunch of playing with words.
    • This should shock ornithologists into an intensive search for cigar shaped wingless birds that move faster than our latest military jets. Obviously a species of flying whale.
      • Thing is, we more or less know what "whales" are and what they're capable of. We can observe something, and knowing what we do about whales, we can pretty decisively conclude that what we're observing is not a whale.

        The key principle here is you don't have to know what something is to figure out what it isn't.

        In contrast: We don't, and really can't, know anything about technology developed by non-human civilizations. We can't observe a thing and conclude it's the work of otherworldly engineers because we ha

        • I basically agree, but establishing an official government bureau does create a paying job opportunity for people looking to get paid for a rather meaningless job.
      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        One of those military videos was likely a bird. From a distance, blurred and highly magnified they look like a blob, just like the video. And despite the "move faster than our latest military jets" claim, the data in the video is sufficient to establish that the blob is moving at pretty ordinary bird speeds.

    • Some UFO are not man made.

      The "U" in UFO stands for "Unidentified". For so long as a flying object is unidentified it cannot be classified as manmade or otherwise. If you can't identify what it is, then you can't identify what made it.

    • Not sure what your rant has anything to do with justifying trillions in defense spending for Star Wars. Also known as the actual reason UFOs are suddenly an "exponential" threat.

  • by mamba-mamba ( 445365 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @02:48AM (#62816755)
    There has been an ongoing effort to adjust expectations on the topic of "UFOs" that has been going on for years now. With the navy releasing videos and so-on. This seems like part of the same communications effort. Probably they are working up to something.
  • by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @02:53AM (#62816761)
    "Not man made" !== "OMG space aliens".
  • ...that collection of elected non-experts .. they are not an authority on UFO's ...

  • ...surrounding UFOs have put people off serious investigation for decades. Everything the cranks see is filtered through the prism of aliens. Eg the supposed pyramid shaped UFOs following US navy warhips in the pacific turned out to be aircraft out of LAX , the pyramid/triangle shapes created by bokeh from the camera being out of focus.

  • by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @04:01AM (#62816899)
    It always happens, you say something, someone will try to twist it into something that it doesn't mean. In very rare cases there are laws against this: If a company improves the safety or security of their product, it is explicitly _not_ an admission or evidence that the previous version was unsafe or insecure. So you can't sue Apple or Google for releasing a new OS version that fixes security issues.
  • Soooo I am confused, I read what the article points at and I see nothing whatsoever to say they believe anything is alien or even implying it is? what am I missing?
    • by splutty ( 43475 )

      What you're missing is that people are fucking idiots.

    • I think this sounds like very wishful thinking from the author. I read the quoted text as "if we can identify it as man-made, we pass it to the appropriate office, and it's no longer 'unidentified'". That's a far cry from "if we can't identify it as man-made, it's extraterrestrial or extradimensional", which is what this author is asserting.

      As for "cross-domain transmedium", I don't what that means, but I bet it doesn't mean extraterrestrial and/or extradimensional.

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @05:03AM (#62816973)

    There are a few things to pick apart here:

    1.) First of all, TFA is reading a lot into these reports and wishy-washy justifications for extra spending and extra budgets. It's important to keep this in mind because then all this UFO-hype is just a storm in the waterglas.

    2.) If there are ET lifeforms out there (and here) and we're occasionally seeing them more often because of our more advanced recon technology, then a few things apply

    -> They have developed FTL transport

    OR

    -> long-term interstellar travel is feasible for them

    This in turn would imply a few things:

    --> We are likely as interesting to them as a colony of ants or culture of bacteria is to us. This is both reassuring and scary as f*ck at the same time.

    --> The answer(s) to the fermin paradox is/are: "We're not seeing them" and/or "There is some interstellar law protecting us." and/or "We are no big deal, this is normal stuff." ... It would probably be some mix of all three.

    --> There is a measurable if not notable chance that they have evolved into artificial lifeforms and have at their own hand sometime in their past transcended their biological origins. Meaning what we might be seeing aren't alien craft but the aliens themselves. This is way more likely if there is no FTL travel as long-term interstellar travel is, in a nutshell, "boring as hell" if I can't take my own reality with me. Meaning transhumanism ... errrm ... "transalienism" is a thing for these folks. Ergo: likelyhood of (mostly) artificial lifeform is high. A minor point on this: Some biblically correct descriptions of angels pretty much fit the plausible "artifical drone" / "synthetic techno-lifeform" with "antigrav technology included" description, especially when the places they appeared in those legends are taken into account. ... Just sayin'.

    • --> We are likely as interesting to them as a colony of ants or culture of bacteria is to us. This is both reassuring and scary as f*ck at the same time

      But colonies of ants and bacteria are very interesting to some of us. Maybe they're extremely long lived and their version of David Attenborough has been making some sort of documentary about our planet for the last 10,000 years ? We might be a particularly charming/interesting example of a (to them) semi sentient species ? Might even be field trips fr

  • Lots of them are women-made.

  • Many US Congresscritters are dumb, really genuinely undergifted on the IQ scale. See Maxine Waters as an example. Maybe they actually believe this. For all the rest, this is likely just an opportunity for more pork. An excuse to shovel money to companies and constituents in their districts.

    Meanwhile, there has yet to be an actual, useful photo of a UFO. Somehow, they are always low resolution and/or from ridiculous distances. Meaning: there is no actual way to figure out what they are. A weather balloon?

    • A piece of plastic blowing around?

      In an episode of the Oh No Ross and Carrie podcast, they were reporting on the Ozark Mountain UFO conference. There was an incident where people started saying they saw UFOs in the sky, but it was just a plastic bag. Even one of the speakers at the conference, a well know UFO nut, was saying that it was obviously a plastic bag.

      Yet people would still talk about it as a UFO (as in aliens) sighting.

      These people literally can't change their mind.

    • Many US Congresscritters are dumb, really genuinely undergifted on the IQ scale. See Maxine Waters as an example.

      Who do you think the dumbest people in congress are? Do you really think Maxine Waters is the best example?

  • Remember that the Pentagon UFO study was lead by a crackpot [slashdot.org]. Maybe this is just fallout. Or maybe Congress isn't known for being in touch with reality.
  • If there are beings capable of interstellar flight who are visiting us, for whatever reason, and have been doing so for centuries, if they wanted to harm us they could have done so long before. How difficult would it have been for such beings to wipe out entire civilizations in the 1200s? What possible weapon could we humans have had back then which would allow us to defend ourselves?

    Further, if these craft are able to make the erratic and physics-defying maneuvers that are claimed, what do we have now th

  • and all of them could be considered a UFO under specific circumstances
  • There's no threat from these UFOs that aren't man-made. So despite the exponential increase in the number of them, the risk we face is still zero. So, no congressperson, it's unnecessary to funnel money to some program that will provide jobs for your state.
  • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @07:23AM (#62817189)
    it could be some other nation has drones with technology we dont have maybe better than what we have, remember Nikola Tesla who was way ahead of his time, there could be a genius out there way ahead of our time building drones far better than what the US Armed Forces has
  • This specific thing just says they are worried when they fail to specifically identify what it is. If it's some weird hypersonic weapon but they haven't figured it out yet, it still qualifies.

    But for another, it's worth keeping in mind that for some congressional seats, in some scenarios someone with as few as 15,000 votes in a small geographic area can win a seat, so plenty of room for niche crockpot in the house. (Based on seeing a primary turnout as low as 16% in a primary midterm in some places and the

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @07:38AM (#62817229) Homepage

    If they can say that they are not man-made, it seems they have identified these formerly unidentified objects?

  • Well I see this Administrations dire need to utilize a Weapon of Mass Distraction in order to paint over incredible amounts of incompetence, has come. Reminds me of the Lewinsky days.

    And of course, the nameless, faceless "war on terror" has pretty much worn out its welcome with the American taxpayer, so now Government needs to invent a whole new "enemy" to piss away trillions on. Hence the threat that has been known (in classified circles) for fucking decades is suddenly and magically a threat we need to

  • by SlideRuleGuy ( 987445 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @08:14AM (#62817317) Journal

    FWIW, in a section where Ross Anderson (Security Engineering, Ross Anderson, Third Edition, p. 329.) talks about military combat aircraft and IFF systems, he mentions how militaries hide their submarines’ top speeds and other capabilities, from other nations. So with aircraft, they have to do things to disguise their top speeds.

    Then he drops this interesting tidbit:

    "And as for air combat, some US radars won’t display the velocity of a US aircraft whose performance is classified, unless the operator has the appropriate clearance. When you read stories about F-16 pilots seeing an insanely fast UFO whose speed on their radar didn’t make any sense, you can put two and two together.

    He seems to be saying that radar (possibly unbeknownst to the actual people monitoring the radar!) is doing strange things to disguise aircraft speed. This could explain a good sized fraction of UFO reports by the military--if it's all correct. If you know more about military radar than Ross Anderson, and just exactly how it can disguise aircraft speed, please let us know.

  • by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Wednesday August 24, 2022 @08:15AM (#62817319)
    All those light years to travel and you chose to visit the flyover states to either search for intelligent life or entertainment,
  • Your average congresscritter doesn't even understand man-made technology, computers, the Internet, and so on, and you're going to listen to anything they have to say about UFOs?
    When you have people with the IQ of a doorknob like Boebert, Greene, and others like them in Congress, you're really going to take them seriously about anything they have to say on the subject of possible alien visitation and technologies? Really?
    LOL, no.
    I'll wait for the actual science, thank you very much. Also, actual aliens.

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