The recent US Senate hearing on so-called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) are often referred, has likely dampened the enthusiasm of those hoping to see evidence of alien life or technology.
Testifying before the US Senate’s Armed Services' Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) Director Sean Kirkpatrick said that his taskforce found “no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics."
Commenting on this development, freelance journalist Robert Skvarla, pointed out a peculiar part of Kirkpatrick’s testimony.
During a conversation with Sputnik, Skvarla said both AARO and its predecessor program were both primarily focused on the collection of UAP-related evidence and on “analyzing large datasets.”
“But the director of AARO, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, mentioned that they would need additional authority to complete their work. And one of the things that he mentioned was counterintelligence work,” the journalist remarked. “What does that mean when you talk about UFOs? How do you conduct counterintelligence work with UFOs?”
He noted that the UFO narrative was previously used by the US spy agencies, such as a CIA psychological warfare operation PBSuccess.
“The CIA's jam wave station in Miami sent out a cable directing staff in Venezuela to create tabloid stories to dominate the news cycle. One of the things they suggested was flying saucers,” Skvarla said.
He also mentioned that US government agencies had previously infiltrated the ufologist community, claiming that the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations “used agents and informants during the sixties and seventies to investigate supposed ties between ufologists and Soviet agents.”
“So it could be any number of things. And my question here is, what does that mean for this specific office? Because unfortunately, without any kind of direction, American intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, other such bodies have a long history of abusing counterintelligence authority,” Skala added.
Meanwhile, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb criticized the approach the US government adopted when faced with all the data about “objects that they cannot explain.”
“Now, the government is not a scientific organization, so they don't have the tools and the expertise and also the time to engage in scientific research. So they establish an office with relatively modest funding that goes report by report and looks back at what was available in terms of data,” Loeb explained while conversing with Sputnik. “And they try to vet what it means and what can we say about it. But this is a very limited approach.”
Instead, the astrophysicist argued, an effort aimed at “studying the sky and figuring out if there are things there that we don't fully understand” would have been a better approach, with Loeb noting how all the data the US government agencies have on UAPs was “collected anecdotally, just by chance.”
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