When I was young I was fascinated with science fiction movies. It’s perhaps worth noting that I grew up before the internet - before video recorders even - so my childhood memories are of whatever happened to be shown on broadcast television.
I can still remember visiting my grandparents on Tuesday nights, and it coinciding with a run of old science fiction movies being shown week-after-week. I remember huddling far too close to the television in order to listen to (and watch) the stories - huffing and puffing about my parents and grandparents talking throughout pivotal scenes as “Marcus from Jupiter” kidnapped yet another buxom blonde wearing something just form-fitting enough to raise the ire of 1950s censors.
The fascination with space, exploration, and “what might be” stayed with me through my teenage years - reading countless books by Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and their peers. I still remember staying up all night reading “Contact” years later.
Somewhere along the way I gained access to “usenet” - the first real iteration of what we might now call “online discussion forums”. I fell straight down the rabbit hole, head first, and discovered an entire online counter-culture filled with conspiracy theorists and treasure troves of supposedly leaked texts from the depths of the world’s most secret places.
I learned about “Project Blue Book” - the US air force research programme into UFOs in the 1950s and 60s. I learned about something that crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947, and a supposed landing at Holloman in late 60s. I learned about little grey men with almond shaped eyes, implants, cattle mutilations, underground bases, abductions, secret projects and all manner of other things.
I bought books, and devoured them - reading them cover to cover, month after month.
I remember a conversation with a friend of my parents late one night about it all - he had spotted a book on the corner of the coffee table. He admitted that he had been similarly invested in his youth - but that slowly over the years his cynicism had grown, given the lack of any tangible evidence for any of it.
I remember discounting his opinion - how could a subject this secret, and this exciting possibly all be made up? And yet the same thing happened to me.
Over the years life intervened, my reading habits changed, and concerns moved from flights of imagination to “going to see about a girl”, “buying a house”, “having children”, “buying food”, “having a career”, and the rest of “normal life”.
For a couple of decades, when questioned about the subject I joked that I had forgotten more than I once knew - which was probably true.
The stories have never entirely gone away though.
You know the old saying “there’s no smoke without fire” ?
A couple of years ago some US servicemen appeared on the news - talking about some bits and pieces of old camera footage from fighter jets - from earlier in their career. They had tracked some fast moving targets from their cockpits, and somehow the footage had made it’s way to the public - no doubt through a “freedom of information request”.
For a short while little green (or grey) men were all over the news again - until they weren’t, because forty years of comedy TV shows, movies, and throw-away mass-media news stories had convinced everybody that anybody telling any sort of story even vaguely related to lights in the sky was obviously a crackpot. Unfortunately they were almost always right too.
Notice I used the word almost.
One of the more interesting facets of modern life - or rather of modern society - replete with rules, protections, and establishment of accountability, is “whistleblowing” - the provision for those who find themselves in difficult situations to report them while remaining protected from professional retribution.
Cutting a long story short, following a group of whistleblowers coming forward, a document went “on the record” this week - presented to the US congress - describing a project called “Immaculate Constellation”.
It turns out “Immaculate Constellation” is an “unacknowledged special access program”. In layman’s terms, a project so secret it’s existence is denied - even to the people authorising funding for it - which seems to be the trigger that caused the US congress to invite (and protect) the whistleblowers in order to brief them, and answer their questions.
A rather remarkable briefing document went “on the record”. Rather than describe it’s contents or contemplate it’s implications, I’ll quote the opening and closing paragraphs:
“This document is the result of a multi-year, internal investigation into the subjects of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Technologies of Unknown Origin (TUO), and Non Human Intelligence (NHI). This investigation was undertaken in response to urgent and credible threats to the public good and safety of the United States of America - and provided to Congress through the UAP whistleblower mechanisms established by the FY23 National Defence Autheorization Act, and the FY23 National Intelligence Authorization Act.” (the report continues…)
“The official disclosure of the existence of Non-Human Intelligences (NHIs) and their presence on Earth is a pivotal moment in human history. The nature of this information is of such incomparable relevance to the public good that it demands to be shared. Some may object and say that disclosure at this time poses too many risks. To them it must be said that we will never be able to predict how individuals, families, communities, and nations will react to revelations of such magnitude.” (the report continues…)
You can read the full report here.
I’m not sure what to think. If you believe any of it, you’re a crackpot. If you disbelieve it, you’re a heretic.
I watched much of the briefing, and the questions asked of the whistleblowers by the representatives in congress. One answer in particular has stayed with me - about the nature of non-human intelligence - that what we think of as “intelligent life” may be entirely wrong. Given our recent forays into machine learning, it certainly caused me to pause.
There’s a realisation that at significant turning points of our development as a species, we have had to refactor everything we thought we knew about the world around us - it’s nature - the way it works - where it came from - how it came to be - even who we are. We’ve consistently been wrong, and when confronted with the evidence of our own discoveries, have historically struggled to accept or adapt.
Witnessing a turning point is a double edged sword - while it’s perhaps exciting to learn something new and unexpected, it might also be terrifying, or enlightening, or disastrous, or everything, all at once.