I Agree With Elon Musk: UFOs Are Real, But They Have Nothing To Do With Space Aliens

Interesting to see Elon Musk repeating previous statements casting serious doubt on the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs.

His latest comments came during a Katie Miller podcast, as reported in this article in the International Business Times on Dec. 12, 2025.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/musk-claims-ufos-are-not-aliens-they-could-new-weapons-program-1762436

Here are the most relevant bits from the article, bold and in brackets:

[‘I have seen no evidence of aliens,’ Musk told Miller, before addressing the notion that a major player like SpaceX might be withholding cosmic knowledge. He confirmed he had directly questioned his highest-level staff. ‘No one on the SpaceX senior team has any evidence of aliens … For Musk, these mysterious objects aren’t vehicles from another star system, but rather terrestrial prototypes developed by governments right here on Earth, likely the US government. His assessment is cold, cynical, and centred firmly on national security, suggesting these are not interstellar explorers but rather advanced military hardware.

‘UFOs… it could be like a new weapons programme… or hypersonic missiles. It’s just basically a weapons prototype. It’s not aliens.’]

So, this would suggest that all of UFO sightings and encounters reported by everyone from Gordon Cooper to Jimmy Carter were actually top-secret Pentagon platforms known only to a small circle of people with the appropriate classification status.

In other words, hardly anyone really has a need to know because these technologies are so important to the national defense.

This is a viewpoint that I share, but it doesn’t explain why we have numerous former U.S. military personnel going on national television claiming to have evidence that these UFOs are extraterrestrial.

However, there is one very plausible reason for this: A concerted, organized and professional-grade disinformation program designed to confuse the public and journalists alike about the nature of these vehicles. After all, if it’s E.T., then it couldn’t be the Pentagon. The secret remains safe.

Why would such a disinformation program be warranted?

Because the secret is so profound, the breakthroughs in propulsion (which have nothing to do with extraterrestrials) are so sensational, that keeping these technologies hidden from the public is a major priority. Once the secret is out, it wouldn’t be long before everyone would figure it out, much as other nations acquired nuclear weapons after World War II.

At the same time, we are not seeing this kind of disinformation in any other country. Now, why is that? Perhaps because there isn’t a need for it in any other country.

People have asked the perfectly logical question: If the United States possessed such a propulsion advance, why not use it, to, say, beat China back to the Moon. The reason is quite simple: because then it would be out, and then soon everyone would have it.

So, you see, these platforms cannot be employed for any overt purposes.

Based on the historical record, it would seem that these propulsion breakthroughs go all the way back to the first truly important UFO sighting, that of Kenneth Arnold in 1947.

If is my hypothesis that the sightings of 1952 over Washington, D.C., were likely a technology test ordered by then President Harry Truman, much as he had earlier ordered a test of the Flying Wing aircraft, when the experimental plane flew at low altitude over our nation’s capital in 1949. (I explore this idea in my novel Flying Saucers.)

You might say this is a crazy idea, but is it any crazier than space aliens traveling trillions of miles from another solar system, only to forget how to land, crashing not once, but numerous times?

It’s worth noting that the only time in spaceflight history that humans landed on another planetary body we managed to do so without crashing, and more than once. That’s what that whole ‘The Eagle has landed” thing was all about.

We know the UFOs are real. They are not a figment of anyone’s imagination. I will point to just one case, that of the giant triangular craft spotted by police offices in rural Illinois in 2000. It was observed at low altitude by cops, one of whom took a photo of it with his Polaroid camera. Granted, the photo is blurred, but you don’t try to take a photo of an illusion or a hallucination. You just don’t.

Moreover, Musk suggests these sightings are possibly “prototypes,” but I would suggest these are not prototypes but fully operational platforms. The “tic tac” encounter was in 2004, so if it was a prototype then, it surely wouldn’t be by now. Anyway, that’s my take on the mysterious realm of UFOs, which continues and is very real.

Congress Just Presented Pentagon UFO Disinformation, And It Was Perfect

The U.S. Congress on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025, delivered a very effective form of Pentagon UFO disinformation. A video of a missile fired by a U.S. drone hitting an unidentified object – probably a balloon, missile or drone – not E.T.

Here’s an excellent breakdown by The War Zone:

https://www.twz.com/news-features/revelation-that-mq-9-reapers-are-now-engaging-aerial-targets-comes-from-uap-hearing

The video was delivered to Rep. Eric Burlison without any explanation by an anonymous source shortly before a hearing about UFOs.

And it was very effective: The UFO faithful hailed it as yet further proof of space aliens visiting Earth; most others disregarded it as more of the same, and there was very little media coverage by the big news organs.

In other words, it was perfect disinformation because it achieved its main objectives:

  1. The big mainstream media ignored the hearing.
  2. People who think the UFOs are extraterrestrials had a field day.
  3. The UFO issue was further marginalized … shunted further off into the tall grass of fringe E.T. conspiracy theories.

This is the intention because the Pentagon has developed astonishing propulsion breakthroughs – technologies that could easily be mistaken for E.T. if observed by those lacking a “need to know.”

Secrets that must be protected at all cost, even if that means shrouding these breakthroughs from everyone, including our elected representatives.

Anyway, as long as everyone thinks these technologies are E.T. or nothing at all, these capabilities will remain exclusive to the Pentagon. The more the public, Congress and the media are confused, the better.

I salute our Pentagon disinformation architects.

This is genius!

Fascinating Research Paper Links Fleeting Star-Like Points of Light with Nuclear Weapons Testing and 1952 UFO Encounters Over Washington, D.C.  

A fascinating research paper regarding transient light sources detected by the Palomar Observatory between 1949 and 1957 has provided an apparent link between these events, UFO reports and above-ground nuclear testing.

The paper is described in this excellent article published on Aug. 8, 2025, in IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/uap-researchers-search-for-transient-events-in-earths-shadow-finding-unexplained-events-80323.

Also, here is a link to the paper itself, posted on July 25 on the website Research Square, https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6347224/v1.

The researchers analyzed data regarding “transient star-like objects of unknown origin” that were identified in the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey.

Basically, the bottom line is that there are statistically significant correlations between these fleeting points of light, nuclear testing and UFO reports, notably the 1952 UFO flap over Washington D.C.

Importantly, the paper specifies that these transient lights were recorded before the launch of any artificial satellites. However, I would like to add the caveat, “that we know of …”

I have speculated that the sensational 1952 UFO encounters over Washington actually represent a huge milestone in U.S. military history, the testing of a top-secret Pentagon weapons platform that harnessed a different type of propulsion technology and that these demonstrations were ordered by then President Harry Truman. After all, Truman had ordered a similar demonstration over Washington for the experimental Flying Wing aircraft in 1949. I further speculate that the reason the 1952 UFO event occurred on two consecutive weekends in July was that the president was not satisfied with the first demonstration of this technology, so a second demonstration was ordered.

At any rate, the research also draws an intriguing link between the transient points of light detected by the observatory and above-ground nuclear tests. While the UFO community has long speculated that space aliens have been monitoring nuclear testing, I suggest the UFOs were actually top-secret Pentagon platforms that were used in conjunction with nuclear testing, perhaps for observation and data collection or for security purposes.

Of course, this is all wild conjecture, but this paper would appear to represent important scientific data linking transient light sources with UFOs and nuclear weapons tests. Kudos to the researchers and IFLScience!

Pulp Fiction Book “Flying Saucers” Predicted Wall Street Journal’s Revelation About Pentagon Electromagnetic Tests Over U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos

It’s worth pointing out that the pulp fiction work Flying Saucers, published in 2014 and revised various times since, predicted the Wall Street Journal’s astonishing revelation that the Pentagon ran electromagnetic tests over U.S. nuclear missile silos in the 1960s, leading to one of the most enduring UFO mysteries of the modern era.

However, whereas the Journal’s investigation found that the Pentagon tests were aimed at learning whether the nuclear bunkers would still function if they received a direct hit, my thought was that the military was testing a new anti-missile technology using electromagnetic pulses to temporarily shut down the controls.

Anyway, here is the relevant passage, from page 150, Flying Saucers:

Air Force General Curtis LeMay, a key player in antigravity R&D, informed McNamara that the saucers were by design the perfect foil against Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. LeMay, who despised McNamara and his intellectual disposition, strong armed the defense secretary into boosting resources for the antigravity program.

Tests ordered by LeMay were conclusive: Just flying alongside missiles and unloading a few hundred rounds from a 30-millimeter cannon was all it would take to neutralize nukes. Or, better yet, hover over a missile silo and barrage it with electromagnetic pulses to overwhelm the controls.

The weapons people were testing both options by 1967, inducing terror in the hearts and minds of military personnel on both sides of the Cold War.

Missile silo operators at U.S. and Soviet bases reported UFO encounters that temporarily shut them down. On other occasions, Air Force and Army engineers reviewing films of missile tests were surprised to see flying saucers shadowing their rockets and shooting what appeared to be a ray gun. The “ray gun” was actually a high-intensity strobe lamp flashing rapidly to simulate cannon fire. Sometimes word leaked out to the press, fueling speculation of alien visitation and interstellar intrigue. All films were sent to the Pentagon and studied by project leaders. Analyses confirmed that flying saucers were the only effective defensive weapon against ICBMs.

 This sort of testing represented a dramatic development: The big brains in charge of antigravity realized the best way to evaluate their new weapon was in the real world. Cribbing a page from Truman’s playbook, they’d fly over cities and near military bases in America and Europe and then watch the fireworks.

The idea was to pit antigravity vehicles against first class air defenses and radar systems. America was fine-tuning the ultimate weapon, and the program got a big boost during the Reagan years, when the black budget tripled.

Pulp Fiction Book “Flying Saucers” Predicted Wall Street Journal’s Pentagon UFO Disinformation Revelations

Well, I’ve been reading all about the Wall Street Journal’s incredible blockbuster story revealing the Pentagon’s UFO disinformation machinery, and you know what I thought?

Jeez, that pulp-fiction book Flying Saucers, published in 2014 and revised various times since, predicted the whole Pentagon UFO disinformation machine.

Here are the relevant passages:

From page 72, Flying Saucers:

“It’s bloody brilliant!” he said. “A breakthrough that seems so much more advanced than anything on the planet couldn’t possibly be from the U.S. military. A program more secret than the Manhattan Project. A decades-long government disinformation scheme to convince everyone that flying saucers are alien spacecraft. There’s never been any real media investigation, you know.”

Page 104, Flying Saucers:

There were other intriguing clues about the secret project, including lofty suggestions that a new class of “gravity engines” could change the face of civilization, offering everything from levitating cars and trains to interplanetary spacecraft.

 “The jet engine will soon be obsolete,” one aviation doyen proclaimed in an article in 1955, jubilantly adding, “We are on the verge of fielding an entirely new type of transportation technology that will usher in the space age.”

 Various industry big shots concurred. They said the nation was close to perfecting antigravity propulsion, and their comments were published in aviation magazines. Sensational remarks attributed to CEOs from several prominent military contractors; the corporate cognoscente who had provided the bulk of U.S. air power for World War II and were now in the forefront of advances in jet turbines and rocketry. Heavy hitters in the fast-emerging military-industrial complex.

 One of the articles was a sensational cover story illustrated with a drawing that depicted a sleek wingless craft floating a few feet off the ground, its hatch swung open and stairs extended invitingly. A headline, in sixty-point Bodoni bold, screamed “The Gravity Engines are Coming!” A subhead followed, “A New Class of Vehicles Will Travel Faster Than Light.”

The article quoted a reputable aviation-industry executive.

 “Because the propulsion mechanism is based on gravity, its occupants will feel no G forces, much like people on Earth do not feel the tremendous speed of the planet as it whizzes through space,” he explained. “Whereas pilots in conventional jet aircraft pass out if they try to pull more than a few G’s, these super anti-gravity planes will be able to cruise far faster than is humanly possible in today’s aircraft.”

 Someone stuck the article in Vannevar Bush’s mailbox, and he nearly choked on his smoldering briar pipe when he read it. As head of Majestic Twelve, it was his job to keep such rumors under wraps. The MIT-trained electrical engineer had administered the most covert research programs in American history.

Under his guidance, the United States developed and deployed instruments that turned the tide of World War II. Radar and the proximity fuse chief among these new weapons. He had ably skippered the Manhattan Project and relentlessly fought to protect America’s atomic secrets, even as Roosevelt sought to share nuclear know-how with the British.

 Now, alarmed by the public outing of antigravity, Bush formulated a policy of secrecy and disinformation to squelch any official indiscretions and neutralize high-level gossip. The hammer came down, and it came down hard. Key industry leaders were summoned to a series of tense high-level meetings with Bush and company. The gatherings were preceded by a sharply worded memo hand-delivered to every person invited.

Under National Security Council letterhead, it was signed by a four-star general and contained the following message:

 “On authority of the National Security Council and the National Security Act of 1947 all information regarding MAJESTIC must remain in the confidence of proper federal personnel and must not be discussed openly. Divulging any information pertaining to MAJESTIC will carry the most severe penalty mandated by military law. The special circumstances mandated under this project require that all documents and hardware be housed in prescribed federal facilities.”

 It may have been couched in bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, but the salient point was this: If you ever, ever talk about this the best possible outcome will be that you will live the rest of your life in prison.

From page 139, Flying Saucers:

Donald W. Johnson, Ph.D. in communication theory, was a tall, imposing, chain-smoking man with a resonant, erudite-sounding voice. He would have thrived in academia, but he opted instead for a life of anonymous service to the U.S. government.

Oh, he was paid very handsomely, in both monetary and figurative terms: a true patriot. Yet his brilliant application of communication concepts never would be published in the scientific literature or described in textbooks. His pivotal contributions would remain hidden between the lines of history.

 Johnson was a specialist, a master of mendacity who led efforts to engineer the UFO disinformation machinery. It all started way back in the 1950s, when he was a young post-doctoral fellow at a federally funded think tank. Ever since that nasty rumor circulated that the saucers over Washington might have been manufactured by Boeing as part of some mysterious U.S. defense project, Majestic Twelve recognized that a professional “perception management” campaign would be needed to mislead the public.

Still fresh from the hallowed halls of Harvard University, the feds tapped Johnson to lead a group of propagandists tasked with forging an indelible link between aliens and flying saucers through popular media. Moviemakers had already started this association all by themselves in the 1956 science fiction film Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers. It was one of the first times Johnson could remember seeing aliens depicted as macrocephalic extraterrestrials, an image that would later morph into the iconic “greys” of UFO lore and mythology.

 He had studied the greatest philosophers and communication theorists: Socrates and Plato, McLuhan and Chomsky. Now he distilled their pearls of wisdom into an intoxicating brew of disinformation, feeding it like nectar to an eager populace.

 Dr. Johnson harnessed the expertise of his skilled staff to manipulate the public mind. His team gained access to the impressionable underbelly of the American psyche by engaging its universal angst and insecurities and employing McLuhan’s maxim: The medium is the message. They used vivid images in film and TV programs to engrave the association between aliens and flying saucers on the mass mind. For the various print media, they appealed to more intellectual sensitivities: the human obsessions with fantasy, paranoia and conspiracy thinking.

 The disinformation program represented a natural evolution in a long history of authority sponsored propaganda. Messages designed to foster a pseudoreality bolstered by simple stereotypes and emotional impressions to channel the communal subconscious, corral the bewildered herd. Operating under the mundane-sounding Division of Information Services, it was an effort the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information, an assemblage of the leading persuasion and propaganda experts charged with selling World War I to a wary electorate.

The most effective messages in any such effort were usually rooted in something inherently unsettling: eternal damnation; an alien threat; imminent demise.

 The universal driver was fear.

A fear powerful and pernicious, a fear Dr. Johnson thought was nearly palpable. He could almost feel it pulsating among the masses while riding the subway to and from work. Always there. Omnipresent yet unseen.

An energy source waiting to be tapped. He sensed it while observing others reading their newspapers and magazines, their trite tabloids. That’s why Dr. Johnson, a man of considerable means owing in large part to family wealth, insisted on taking the subway to work nearly every day. Mentally recording the facial expressions, the body language, the nervous conversations. They were like laboratory mice to him.

Or possibly even less significant: paramecia. He likened his manipulations to a rudimentary biology experiment often performed by undergraduates. The task was to introduce a viscous medium onto a microscope slide full of the tiny aquatic critters. You see, paramecia swim too fast for students to observe their ciliated locomotion, but you could slow them down by adding the syrupy liquid to their environment. The disinformation was not unlike that sticky medium: impede cognition so that people never really make the connection between the military and flying saucers.

 The entire affair would have all been so comical if it weren’t such serious business, he often thought with sadistic delight: to watch the people squirm. Johnson and his staff had no idea whether flying saucers existed. They didn’t care. Their job was only to make people associate them with strange and frightening creatures from other worlds. To this end they grooved their imagery into the fabric of existing mainstream culture, then sat back and watched with a detached scientific curiosity at what unfolded.

 One simple message reverberated from a constant background drumbeat of the concepts they cultivated: Aliens ride in flying saucers.

 This overarching theme was muddled because the public initially gave some credence to the idea that human engineers, not aliens, were behind the saucers, a sentiment that had existed ever since one crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947. General Hap Arnold, the putative father of the U.S. Air Force, let slip that the discs could be “a development of United States scientists” that had not yet been perfected.

Any such associations between saucers and the military, subconscious or otherwise, must be expunged, or, at the very least, overlaid with the alien-saucer paradigm.

Dr. Johnson measured his success by what he read, watched and heard. Always tweaking the messages, the “products” generated by his office. The DIS exploited mainstream culture like a sharp instrument to promote the ET-flying saucer myth. Johnson’s crack team of media experts, psychologists, literary scholars, sociologists, linguists, journalists, advertising and communication wonks would do a number on the American psyche.

 It was a scientific bastion for the nation’s best liars. Most central to their modus operandi was the fundamental truism that propaganda is most powerful when least conspicuous.  Specialists wrote military reports debunking high-profile UFO events. These were masterpieces of deception, filled with mounds of technical jargon and falsified data sculpted into plausible, workaday explanations for the most potentially dangerous sightings, encounters that might lead people to finally start putting two and two together.

Handwriting experts at DIS forged the signatures of everyone from Albert Einstein to Ronald Reagan, their names appearing impressively in reports, memos and dispatches. Documents, photos, reports, illustrations. They did it all, a one-stop shop for disinformation; planting their seeds of subterfuge, then watching them sprout and take root. They provided nourishment over the years with granules of half-truths precisely packaged and distributed for maximum effect.

The greatest concoctions were the well-crafted reports and books and the fabricated witnesses linking flying saucers to alien visitors, and, by extension, to the lunatic fringe. This was a substantial body of work, a brilliant compendium of stealth marketing.

Well, there you have it, Flying Saucers predicted the Pentagon scheme to deceive the public about UFOs. Yet another example of fact mirroring fiction.

Wall Street Journal Blows Lid Off Pentagon’s UFO Disinformation Machine. The American People, and the UFO Community, Have Been Had!

The Wall Street Journal has conducted an investigation that has revealed a Pentagon UFO disinformation effort going back decades aimed at making people think the objects are extraterrestrial to distract from top-secret U.S. military programs.

Here is one retelling of the Journal’s investigation, posted on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1l58uui/wsj_the_pentagon_disinformation_that_fueled/

Among the major takeaways:

  • The Pentagon has been issuing UFO disinformation for decades to distract from top-secret programs.
  • Incoming military officials have been the victims of UFO “hazing,” a practice in which they are fed disinformation to make them think top-secret programs are reverse-engineered extraterrestrial tech.
  • Bizarre UFO encounters over U.S. missile installations in the 1960s were top-secret Pentagon tests to determine whether the silos would be vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses from Russian nukes. Even the officials who operate the installations did not know about the secret tests, leading them to think all these years that it was E.T.
  • The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, omitted revelations about the Pentagon disinformation efforts in its big report released last year, but the information in some redacted form will be included in the next report from AARO, whenever that’s going to be released.

MAJOR FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS:

  • The electromagnetic test apparatus used over the nuclear missile launch facilities was suspended from or housed within some kind of platform. What was that platform?
  • What are all of the other top-secret programs that were being protected by disinformation? Were any of these new or different types of propulsion systems that might appear to be from an alien planet if you didn’t know otherwise?
  • Is the Pentagon UFO disinformation continuing to this day? So, are some of the people who have been testifying recently before Congress agents of the Pentagon disinformation machine?
  • Is the disinformation being used to hide the existence of a host of top-secret programs in aviation and space travel? If so, is there a shadow space program that runs parallel to NASA and the Space Force but is far more capable than either of those entities.
  • Have all of the major UFO encounters and sightings over the decades stemmed from top-secret U.S. technologies, starting with Kenneth Arnold’s sighting in 1947 and the UFOs over Washington, D.C., in 1952?

‘Vetted’ Podcast and Rogan Interview Acknowledge That Pentagon UFO Disinformation Likely Aims to Distract from Top-Secret Military Programs

I noticed this item in a recent edition of Vetted: The UFO Sleuth podcast and YouTube show.

https://www.vetted.show/episodes/bombshell-allegations-against-hal-puthoff-this-changes-everything

It summarizes a recent interview by Joe Rogan focusing on UFO disinformation: who is likely doing it and why they are likely doing it.

Here are the main points from the Vetted blog as I see them, in brackets, quote marks and bold print.

 [“Why would government agencies want to confuse and mislead the public—and their own citizens—about UFOs? The answer is as complex as the web itself. According to Gentile, and as recounted by Patrick, the U.S. government (and presumably others) may be more invested in safeguarding advanced technology than in revealing any “alien” truths. These disinformation campaigns are not just random acts—they’re strategic moves to distract researchers and keep prying eyes away from sensitive projects.

“…Even now, stories are planted, personalities are manipulated, and the public is kept guessing … There’s a sad irony in all this: those most passionate about the search for truth are often the ones most misled. The frustration expressed by AJ and echoed by Patrick is palpable. Wouldn’t we be farther along in understanding the phenomenon if not for years—decades—of calculated misdirection?”]

To this, I say, amen!

Of course the Pentagon has been creating and distributing UFO disinformation – not only to the public at large but evidently to Congress  as well – and there can be only one logical reason for this: to confuse the public about the development of astonishing propulsion breakthroughs by the U.S. government going all the way back to the 1940s.

There have been numerous examples of credible sightings of aerospace platforms that are based on a different type of propulsion system than conventional technologies, encounters that roughly began in the United States with Kenneth Arnold’s seminal sighting in 1947.

So, I would propose that the Pentagon has likely developed various top-secret propulsion platforms, entirely unknown to the public and developed over the past seven decades or so, thanks to a burgeoning “black budget” that keeps these programs hidden from Congress.

Logically, then, let’s assume that if you observe something ON planet Earth, it is probably OF planet Earth. Let’s further assume, therefore, that all of the UFOs encountered over the decades are of terrestrial origin: Some nation on Earth has developed a different kind of propulsion tech, and possibly more than one novel type of propulsion system.

Because these sightings began during the immediate postwar period, the most logical conclusion, then, is that it’s the United States that has developed these systems.

Anyway, let’s call this viewpoint the “terrestrial hypothesis” for UFOs, as opposed to the extraterrestrial hypothesis (i.e., the UFOs are space aliens), which has dominated the whole national conversation about this phenomenon since the beginning.

Well, then, the terrestrial hypothesis would suggest that a whole bizarre inventory of encounters involving U.S. military personnel and civilians alike have always been top-secret Pentagon technologies known only to a small circle with a “need to know.” Everything from those flying saucers over Washington, D.C., in 1952 (possibly a demonstration ordered by President Truman, much as he had ordered a similar demonstration of the flying wing aircraft in 1949), to the UFOs that disabled nuclear missile launch systems in the 1960s (possibly a new type of antimissile system being tested by the Pentagon but unknown to most military personnel), the huge triangular thing observed over the Hudson Valley in the 1980s, the “Phoenix lights” in 1997, another huge triangular thing encountered by police officers in rural Illinois in 2000, the “Tic Tac” craft encountered by U.S. Navy pilots in 2004, the flying disc over Chicago O’Hare in 2006, etc., etc.

Why the disinformation? Because as soon as you entangle the entire subject of UFOs within the rhetorical quagmire of space aliens you relegate the whole story to the fringe. The public and the media don’t take it seriously. The only people who do take it seriously are those who are already convinced that it’s E.T. or are just cynically profiting off the space-alien hype.

Over the decades, we’ve seen a series of books and articles by former military personnel who claim to have encountered extraterrestrials. It’s a legacy that in my opinion goes back many years and includes The Day After Roswell, published in 1997. (If you are interested, please read my review of The Day After Roswell, which I regard as a masterpiece of disinformation, here, https://emilvenere.com/files/138490884.pdf)

The goal of this disinformation is not necessarily to convince people that the UFOs are extraterrestrial, but to muddy the whole subject, to distract people who might otherwise suspect that the Pentagon has achieved amazing propulsion breakthroughs that would be highly disruptive if they became known to the public. Breakthroughs that have nothing to do with extraterrestrials, but that were dreamed up and perfected by the same species that has brought us a host of other powerful innovations, from nuclear weapons to lasers, microchips to advanced medical imaging and so on and so forth.

No assist from space aliens needed!

As to why the Pentagon would sometimes be flying these weapons over populated areas, perhaps it’s real-world training, a “living lab” to hone tactics and to study how well they perform against state-of-the-art, white-world technologies like F-16s. There have been examples of military training exercises taking place over populated areas. This excellent article in The War Zone documents one such exercise over Los Angeles: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38753/those-mysterious-gray-helicopters-were-landing-on-multiple-downtown-la-rooftops-last-night

Anyway, this terrestrial hypothesis for UFOs leads to many follow-up questions and concerns, chief among them: Is there a shadow space program that runs parallel to NASA and the Space Force that is far more capable than either of those entities? If so, how far have we gone? Do we have military bases in deep space?  Are any of these top-secret platforms nuclear-powered? Have we gone interstellar?

Article in ‘Den of Geek’ Asks Whether Pentagon UFO Disinformation is Deliberate. Yes, it is, and Here’s Why

I was reading an interesting piece about Pentagon disinformation regarding UFOs, and the writer muses about whether said disinformation is deliberate.

The piece, in a publication called Den of Geek, recounts the disinformation exploits of one Richard Doty, a former intelligence officer who deliberately spread false information about UFOs, linking the objects to alleged space aliens.

Here is a link to the article, written by Alejandro Rojas, who writes about science, entertainment, and the paranormal: https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/why-the-pentagon-needs-to-address-ufo-disinformation/

Here is an excerpt from the article, in brackets, bold print and quote marks:

[“Doty has admitted that during his career as an OSI agent, beginning in 1980, he had been sharing disinformation about aliens and UFOs with the UFO community. Within weeks of the airing of the live UFO program, a man in Nevada named Bob Lazar approached reporters in Las Vegas claiming he had worked on alien spacecraft at Area 51. Despite lacking evidence, Lazar’s claims made headlines, and Area 51, then one of United States’ most secret military bases, quickly became its most famous.

Stories like this leave me wondering how much of the UFO mythos is disinformation created by the U.S. government and why.”]

To this, I say, of course the Pentagon has been creating and distributing UFO disinformation, and there can be only one logical reason for this: to confuse the public about the development of astonishing propulsion breakthroughs by the U.S. government going all the way back to the 1940s. As soon as you entangle the entire subject of UFOs within the rhetorical quagmire of space aliens you relegate the whole story to the fringe. The public and the media don’t take it seriously. The only people who do take it seriously are those who are already convinced that it’s ET or are just cynically profiting off the space-alien hype.

Over the decades, we’ve seen a series of books and articles by former military personnel who claim to have encountered extraterrestrials. It’s a legacy that in my opinion goes back many years and includes The Day After Roswell, published in 1997. (If you are interested, please read my review of The Day After Roswell, which I regard as a masterpiece of disinformation, here, https://emilvenere.com/files/138490884.pdf)

Of course, these claims can never be verified, and that’s the genius of it. It’s always: Well, I could tell you more, but that’s classified. But then why say anything at all, if you were so concerned about revealing classified information? Why say anything?

The only thing that is clear is that something is there. The UFOs do exist. So, I would propose that instead of jumping automatically to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, we first FULLY ENTERTAIN and explore the terrestrial hypothesis. So, for example, the “tic tac” object encountered in 2004 by Navy pilots over a U.S. military training range, is, in fact, a U.S. military platform. That’s why it was observed there. Furthermore, the fact that this encounter took place over a training range, as opposed to a test range, would suggest that these are not “experimental aircraft,” but operational platforms. I would also propose that the Pentagon has likely developed various top-secret platforms, entirely unknown to the public and developed over the past seven decades or so, thanks to a burgeoning “black budget” that keeps these programs hidden from Congress.

Logically, then, the terrestrial hypothesis would suggest that a whole bizarre inventory of encounters involving U.S. military personnel and civilians alike have always been top-secret Pentagon technologies known only to a small circle with a “need to know.” Everything from those flying saucers over Washington, D.C., in 1952 (possibly a demonstration ordered by President Truman, much as he had ordered a similar demonstration of the flying wing aircraft in 1949), to the UFOs that disabled nuclear missile launch systems in the 1960s (possibly a test of a new anti-missile technology), the huge triangular thing observed over the Hudson Valley in the 1980s, the “Phoenix lights” in 1997, another huge triangular thing encountered by police officers in rural Illinois in 2000, the flying disc over Chicago O’Hare in 2006, the tic tacs, etc., etc.

As to why the Pentagon would sometimes be flying these weapons over populated areas, perhaps it’s real-world training, a “living lab” to perfect tactics and to study how well they perform against state-of-the-art, white-world technologies like F-16s. There have been examples of secret military training exercises taking place over populated areas. This excellent article in The War Zone documents one such exercise over Los Angeles: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38753/those-mysterious-gray-helicopters-were-landing-on-multiple-downtown-la-rooftops-last-night

So, the terrestrial hypothesis proposes that the UFOs have never been about space aliens. Instead, the Pentagon has made a series of technological breakthroughs in propulsion going all the way back to the first important UFO sighting, that of Kenneth Arnold in 1947. These technologies are so unconventional they could easily be mistaken for something from another planet.

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, former head of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), has alluded to this possibility in his writings and statements. He and an official AARO report reviewing sightings and encounters since 1945, have unequivocally stated that witnesses, including members of the military, have unwittingly observed top-secret technologies and have mistaken these systems for extraterrestrial visitation.

Here are some excerpts from the AARO report:

• AARO assesses that some portion of sightings since the 1940s have represented misidentification of never-before-seen experimental and operational space, rocket, and air systems, including stealth technologies and the proliferation of drone platforms.

• AARO concludes many of these programs represent authentic, current and former sensitive, national security programs, but none of these programs have been involved with capturing, recovering, or reverse-engineering off-world technology or material.

• In many cases, the interviewees named authentic USG (U.S. government) classified programs well-known and understood to those appropriately accessed to them in the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch; however, the interviewees mistakenly associated these authentic USG programs with alien and extraterrestrial activity. 

• AARO assesses that all of the named and described alleged hidden UAP reverse-engineering programs provided by interviewees either do not exist; are misidentified authentic, highly-sensitive national security programs that are not related to extraterrestrial technology exploitation

• The interviewees and others who have mistakenly associated authentic sensitive national security programs with UAP had incomplete or unauthorized access to these programs; discussion of these programs outside of secure facilities presents a high risk of exposing national security information.]

Anyway, this terrestrial hypothesis for UFOs leads to many follow-up questions and concerns, chief among them: Is there a shadow space program that runs parallel to NASA and the Space Force that is far more capable than either of those entities? If so, how far have we gone? Do we have military bases in deep space?  Are any of these top-secret platforms nuclear-powered?

Article in Good magazine recounts John Lennon’s UFO encounter. But was this actually a federal surveilling operation?

I read this interesting mention of John Lennon’s famous UFO encounter over New York City in 1974. The brief article appeared May 8, 2025, in a publication called Good.

https://www.good.is/john-lennon-ufo-sighting

You know my theory: That, like Jimmy Carter’s similar close encounter in 1969, this was probably not space aliens but the federal government running surveillance.

Here is one of my previous posts on the subject:

https://emilvenere.me/2025/01/05/like-john-lennon-was-jimmy-carter-being-surveilled-by-the-feds-leading-to-their-similar-ufo-encounters/

I would argue that Carter’s experience wasn’t any sort of mistaken identity with known objects. Instead, for whatever reason, perhaps he was being surveilled by the federal government. I would further argue that this object was some sort of classified flying platform.

In the John Lennon example, in 1974, the rockstar insisted that he and his partner saw what can only be described as the classic flying saucer hovering just outside their New York City apartment. He later drew a sketch of what they both saw.

(Here’s a little background article on ultimateclassicrock.com https://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-lennon-ufo/)

In Carter’s case, I think we can dispense with the usual speculations that he saw a planet, star or some other prosaic thing. Considering his education and background, he clearly knew the difference.

And in Lennon’s case, we know he was considered a subversive, maybe even an enemy of the state, by certain federal intelligence types.

So, I propose both of these men were being spied upon by our own government.

The spying platform was a top-secret flying craft equipped with an extraordinary propulsion technology that remains secret to this day.

Here is Lennon’s description of what happened, bold and in brackets, from the article cited above in the culture site ultimateclassicrock.com.

[“I was lying naked on my bed, when I had this urge,” Lennon said in a conversation with Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. “So I went to the window, just dreaming around in my usual poetic frame of mind. … There, as I turned my head, hovering over the next building, no more than 100 feet away was this thing with ordinary electric light bulbs flashing on and off round the bottom, one non-blinking red light on top.”

His girlfriend, May Pang, said: “As I walked out onto the terrace,” she said, “my eye caught this large, circular object coming towards us. It was shaped like a flattened cone, and on top was a large, brilliant red light, not pulsating as on any of the aircraft we’d see heading for a landing at Newark Airport.”]

So, I propose this was likely just Uncle Sam, running electronic surveillance on Lennon, who was deemed a socialist threat, just as we’ve spied on numerous public figures over the years.

This conspiracy theory fits nicely with my overall hypothesis that the UFOs have never been extraterrestrial. They’ve always been Uncle Sam. They were Uncle Sam back in 1947 when Kenneth Arnold spotted a squadron of UFOs near Mount Rainier; during the flying saucer scare of 1952 over Washington, D.C., when, I speculate, President Harry Truman ordered a demonstration of these weapons much as he had arranged a similar demonstration of the new flying wing in 1949, when the aircraft flew low over the capital; during the 1960s when startled pilots were reporting UFOs after unwittingly observing flights of the top secret U-2 and SR-71; also during the 1960s at U.S. nuclear missile facilities, when, I propose, the military was testing a top-secret anti-missile technology capable of temporarily disabling the rocket launch systems; in the 1980s over the Hudson Valley when bystanders including police officers saw a huge triangular thing floating overhead; in Belgium when numerous credible witnesses saw the same sort of craft; a similar thing over Phoenix, Ariz., in 1997; likewise, a giant delta-shaped thing observed by a raft of cops in 2000 over rural Illinois; the “Tic Tac” encountered by U.S. Navy pilots in 2004; the flying disc over Chicago O’Hare International Airport in 2006, when employees saw a stealthy saucer hovering overhead before it abruptly shot straight up at high speed, punching a hole in the cloud cover that lingered afterward; etc., etc.

So, unless we think these were all space aliens, it certainly appears that based on witness testimony the Pentagon evidently has achieved a propulsion breakthrough. Call it antigravity, if you like. I would argue that when you consider the pattern of UFO encounters going all the way back to the immediate postwar period, the U.S. has had some form of field propulsion technology either in development or in operation since that time. If this is true, then these systems have been evolving completely in the dark for more than 70 years.

Let’s call this idea the “terrestrial hypothesis” for UFOs, as opposed to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, which has dominated our whole national conversation about the phenomenon going back decades.

While it is admittedly a radical concept, the terrestrial hypothesis makes a lot more sense than space aliens traveling trillions of miles from another solar system, then forgetting how to land and crashing in the desert, or inexplicably hanging out over U.S. military training ranges and the like.

As to why the Pentagon would sometimes be flying these weapons over populated areas, perhaps it’s real-world training, a “living lab” to perfect tactics and to study how well they perform against state-of-the-art, white-world technologies like F-16s. There have been examples of military training exercises taking place over populated areas. This excellent article in The War Zone documents one such exercise over Los Angeles: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38753/those-mysterious-gray-helicopters-were-landing-on-multiple-downtown-la-rooftops-last-night

Anyway, for what it’s worth, this is my contribution to the various ruminations about John Lennon’s and Jimmy Carter’s curious, and similar, UFO encounters.

Is ‘Age of Disclosure’ Just More Pentagon Disinformation Designed to Confuse People About UFOs?

A new documentary purporting to prove the existence of space aliens on earth is probably just more disinformation intended to confuse the public. Here are a few articles about the work:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/movies/the-age-of-disclosure-congress.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/the-age-of-disclosure-documentary-oscar-eligible-screening-uap-aliens-rcna245109

https://nypost.com/2025/11/16/entertainment/filmmaker-declares-existence-of-ufos-no-longer-a-question-as-doc-probes-80-years-of-secrets/

The Age of Disclosure includes statements from many sources, including those having held high positions in government. 

But it appears that this is just more disinformation, subterfuge intended to hide the development of advanced propulsion technologies by the Pentagon that have nothing to do with alien beings.

And based on reader comments it’s working splendidly.

As you can see, in most cases the media have largely accepted the totally unverified claims in the film. Generally, the public, and journalists, have entirely overlooked the possibility that the UFOs encountered by military personnel are advanced U.S. technologies, hidden from the public for many decades. These are technologies that, if moved into the commercial sector could provide huge economic, social and cultural benefits.

Meanwhile, the more skeptical media and members of the public, when faced with the wild assertions made in the program, tend to discount the entire genre of UFOs as ridiculous or delusional. They view such programs purely as moneymaking schemes; they don’t suspect that there is an underlying truth to these claims but that this truth has nothing to do with space aliens. They don’t consider the possibility that UFO encounters being reported are actually the result of startling advances in propulsion tech, systems that if viewed by the casual observer or even military personnel lacking a ‘need to know’ might seem like something from an alien civilization.

As a result, judging from the public reaction to this program, the only people taking it seriously are the gullible and those who are already convinced that the UFOs are extraterrestrial.

So, the disinformation is working!

And it works by issuing false information about UFOs that simply cannot be verified. You will often hear sources say they could tell us more, but that’s classified. But this makes no sense because if you were so concerned about protecting classified secrets, you wouldn’t say anything at all. You would just keep your mouth shut.

On the other hand, if your goal is to lead the public astray from what’s really going on, this is a brilliant tactic. This is because if you don’t put out specific information, such as documents, photos, etc., etc., you can’t be debunked. It’s all so vague, yet, compelling to enough people. 

It’s a tactic that, in my opinion, has been very successful over the decades.

But the UFOs have never had anything to do with extraterrestrials.

One very telling clue is that this epidemic of UFO encounters, specifically with military personnel, seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon. This is a glaring problem. After all, it’s a big planet. If E.T. were traveling here, messing with our military pilots, wouldn’t we also be getting similar reports from foreign military branches in the U.K., Europe, Asia, which cover far more territory than the United States?

We aren’t.

Sure, there was the amazing Belgium UFO flap of the 1990s, and also the Iran UFOs of the 1970s (when Iran was a U.S. ally), but I contend those were top secret U.S. platforms being tested over allied skies. After all, if we had lost one, we could have easily retrieved it. It didn’t happen over Russia, it didn’t happen over China, it didn’t happen over any other adversarial nations. And besides, these encounters are ancient history. The most sensational U.S. UFO encounters have been happening well into the 2000s.

The giant triangular thing over rural Illinois involving police officers, one of whom took a photo with his Polaroid, was 2000; the Tic Tac was 2004; the Chicago O’Hare flying disc was 2006.

So, why are we seeing these primarily over the United States?

I contend it’s because the Pentagon is testing these platforms under real-life scenarios, much as it does other military tech (those missions over Los Angeles involving special-ops helicopters, etc.)

Anyway, I would chalk up the Age of Disclosure as just more of the same; expertly produced, successfully executed disinformation.