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UAP/UFO Phenomenon: It's not aliens, until it is.
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I think this post kind of sums up the problem with classified info in general.
The public wants to know all the things ever, because they're nosy. The military doesn't want anything declassified ever.
Clearly, neither of those two groups are objective about where the line should be.
Congress is the closest thing we have to an objective third party (though half of congress is insane now, which is suboptimal), and so we can't really approach oversight with "well, it's too dangerous for us to even give you enough information to decide what should be classified or even what should have oversight, so just trust us."
Because like, I don't. Not because the military is evil or anything, but because nobody likes oversight. Nobody wants someone butting in and telling them how to run their shit. So you can't really let them decide on their own what gets overseen, because the answer will be "nothing, fuck on out of here."
If Schumer, or whoever is in charge of this, doesn't understand enough to make a call, then you get someone to explain it to him, or at least a SME that can give him enough info so he CAN make a call.
We used to do the bolded. But we slaughtered staff funding and left it up to private business and forced people to spend most of their time fund raising. Rather than having a properly stocked staff riddled with vets and PHDs who could talk to those involved and get sort of the "No, not how that works, no not what we are doing. Here's how it breaks down I'll be back tomorrow with the details or drive over the Potomac and we'll get a room. Happy to walk you all through this." Institutional grasp of information matters.
This isn't just a flaw with military related items either. If you don't have the funds to staff a staff where you can hire people that work on health policy all you can do is listen to lobbyists. Which is a silly way to go about it.
It's not really just classified shit, it's that the entire way we run stuff is sort of crazy.
And from the general public's perspective, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
but what if they end up being arrival aliens and we write affirming messages to each other on white boards
I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but a lot of my skepticism regarding UAP despite my fascination with the topic comes from having a great uncle who was a Skunk Works guy. He worked on the SR-71 and F-117 programs. When various shifts in classifications allowed him to talk about certain aspects of the projects, it was hilarious. "Oh yeah, that one UFO sighting was an A-12 afterburner test. People say "Nothing human made can go that fast! Well, yes, the A-12 could, kid."
I don't trust humans to do this.
Because in order to not be derived from “unknown origin or biological evidence of non-human intelligence beyond a reasonable doubt” we must tell you what it is. Or at the least that we know what it is. At least under a reading of this bill that does anything with regards to that “vast network of people who know”.
Which means pointing people at the things to investigate.
So suppose we have a bunch of info and some we know what it is because it’s classified and someone knows. And some we don’t because we don’t know what it was.
So the military is asked about these incidents and they give back one of two responses. “We don’t know what that is” and “we can’t tell you about that”. “We can’t tell you about that” means “this is secret and you should investigate it because it’s not just a dumb internet rumor”
And then the Review Board will complete its review and announce that there is nothing of 'unknown origin or biological evidence of non-human intelligence beyond a reasonable doubt' to disclose.
And the conspiracies will continue.
Where is the belief that the civilian government isn't already in charge coming from? If one makes the, entirely reasonable imho, assumption that there is no secret UFO wreckage, then the only remain outcomes are declassifying nothing, or declassifying something improperly.
The legislature has complete access to all classified information and programs and everyone is fine, indeed quite happy, that it does.
Maybe I am confused as to the point of discussion at hand, but here's Zavian's post with the Democrats own statement?
Bold mine.
Isn't this entirely what we're discussing? If not, my mistake and I'll bow out till I get caught back up.
the claim there is not that the military (or some other third party) is hiding secrets from the civilian government, it's that one part of that government is hiding info from another part
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
"Some in Congress" believe all kinds of stupid shit. To me this seems like a media panic that had managed to spread to enough overly credulous members of Congress that leadership feels this public song and dance is necessary. Which isn't to say that any reports or whistle-blowers shouldn't be investigated. But Congress already has ways to do that without creating some new independent commission.
The story about the government hiding a giant crashed UFO by building a lab around it really gets me. Maybe a group of Congress critters can demand a tour of the facility. Nope sorry, we know they have it but not where it is, but it’s totally real.
There is no such thing as the bolded. If it did, no one would label it in the first place.
There are also a million simpler, easier ways to steal DoD funds. It's already done in the open with no consequence.
As a Hoosier, I find it grimly ironic that the first evidence I’ve seen of either of my feckless, cowardly Senators doing something other than tweet about “wokeism” or meeting with a mob of J6 goons on the morning of the day - that is to say, performing some kind of duty of their office - would be here in the thread about “maybe aliens?”.
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We all knew a wrench didn't cost $1500 and a coffee maker $10k. I'm really excited to see the sheer scope of that misappropriation.
Except that a lot of examples like that when actually looked at in detail it turns out that when you have exacting specifications, low unit counts, or need to deliver it to a warzone it actually does cost that much.
When the military buys something and the thing isn’t off the shelf they run cost+ iirc.
So if they contract out a hammer and the hammer needs to meet certain specifications the cost of the hammer is
(Engineering time + production tooling+ material and energy costs)/ units.
If units is low then low material and energy costs don’t matter a lot. Someone still had to design the hammer and tool up a production system to make the hammer. If it costs a month if engineer time (10k) and then another 100k in tooling but you only need 110 hammers…well your hammer cost 1,000.