In order to be a whistle-blower, you first must have a whistle.
First of all, a clarification of terminology. "UFO" stands for "Unidentified Flying Object" and means only that the object is unidentified, not a space alien or flying saucer. Every "UFO" ever spotted turns out to be an object that is readily identified. And fully half of the "UFOs" sighted are made-up hoaxes. Just because you see something in the sky doesn't mean space aliens are about to invade.
Consider airplanes. No doubt you've been near an airport and seen a plane landing. From a certain angle, it appears to be moving very slowly - almost hovering, in fact. At night, all you see is the navigation lights, and again, it may appear to be "hovering" if it is heading toward or away from you. So these "sightings" where people say they saw a "cigar-shaped object" with flashing lights "hovering" and then suddenly accelerate away are easily explained - it is merely a jet aircraft, which, while travelling away from you appears to be motionless - until they change direction and "suddenly" accelerate. I know this because I've seen the effect myself.
Recently, there has been a lot of hoopla on the Internet that a "whistle-blower" is "telling all" about how aliens have visited the Earth and how "scientists" (you know, the guys with white lab coats and clipboards) are reverse-engineering alien "tech" and using it today. This is an old song, and has been going on for decades now. It is easily debunked.
To begin with, UFO "sightings" never existed prior to World War II. It was in the post-war period of nuclear fear, as well as the coming of age of science fiction movies that we started to see this mass hysteria manifest itself. A few people faked "UFO" pictures, one famously by throwing a DeSoto hubcap in the air and taking a grainy photo of it. They admitted the fraud, but every single UFO book out there (and there are many - it is a lucrative business) has this photo and of course, claims it is real.
Some claim that the reason why aliens never visited us before was that it wasn't until the modern era that radio and television signals leaked out into space and alien civilizations got a dose of I Love Lucy and flew here to investigate. This was illustrated in the movie Contact, where early television signals from the Berlin Olympics are beamed back to us.
There are a host of problems with this idea. First, it has already been established that radio signals from Earth, unless directed in a tight beam, pretty much peter out by the Moon's orbit. Television and Radio towers are set up to transmit an omnidirectional signal within a local area. If Aliens could receive our television signals in another solar system, then why can't I get television and radio stations from Chicago or LA? The simple answer is, we can't and they can't.
The other problem is the speed of light. Assuming a radio or television signal could travel that far into space, it would take years, decades, or even centuries, for aliens in another star system to receive them. Yes, it is true that the SETI program has tried to "listen" for alien life signals and even send signals of our own. The are using a huge array of antennas way out in the desert, which you need in order to detect such faint signals from far away - or to effectively send them. Since our planet spins on its axis, however, we can only send these signals (or monitor for them) for half of each day, at best. Even if some far-off solar system receives our signal, a hundred years from now (and they happened to be listening in our direction at exactly the right time) it would take another hundred years to get a reply.
That is probably why SETI is doomed to failure. We spent all that money to send out a signal or monitor a far star system for signals, and we can only target one system at a time - in a star field of billions, if not trillions of stars. The odds of winning the lottery ten times in a row are better.
And by the way, why are we funding SETI if we've already been contacted by aliens? It's like sending a telegram to someone who is already in your living room. And the simple answer is: because we haven't been contacted by aliens yet - and it will never happen.
The big problem for alien contact is that unless the aliens evolved in your own solar system, it will be damn hard for them to come visit. Maybe if Mars really had Martians, we would have contacted an alien species by now. But even the closest solar systems with inhabitable planets are many light-years away - often hundreds of light-years. Even travelling at the speed of light, it would take generations to reach such star systems, and it is doubtful that we would ever fund such a one-way expedition - or that aliens would, either.
The problem with interstellar travel is that deep space isn't empty. At speeds even approaching half the speed of light, the energy released by an impact with even a particle of dust would be equivalent to a hydrogen bomb. You can't just go trucking through space and not expect to hit things, even tiny things. Even an atom or two.
So that leaves so-called "warp drives" and "FTL" or "faster-than-light" travel. Surely alien "tech" would have developed this - a shortcut across the galaxy! But while it is a science fiction shortcut, it isn't clear such technology exists or could ever exist. Tales of sailing through black holes or "wormholes" are just that - fanciful tales. In SciFi, they use these shortcuts to make the story work, much as Star Trek used the "transporter beam" because it was too expensive to do model shots of shuttlecraft for every episode (even the special effects of the transporter were deemed too expensive, and in later years would have Kirk et al. walk into the transporter room and then scene cut to the planet surface).
But what about "alien tech?" Surely this explains our modern technology and the building of the pyramids! This trope goes back many years, and as I recalled before, my hapless brother read some of the books by Erich von Däniken, which claimed that every achievement of mankind, was, in fact, created by Space Aliens.
For example, in one of his books, he "proved" that the pyramids at Giza were built by space aliens - which became a theme in the movie Stargate, where pyramids were used as landing pads for huge UFOs. His argument was that the stones were too big for primitive people to move, ergo, space aliens. However, the hieroglyphics inside these pyramids include a basic 'how to" of pyramid building, including diagrams showing how a large number of people can move a huge stone block up an inclined ramp. The Egyptians were not primitives, but were part of a sophisticated civilization.
It's kind of insulting to the builders of the pyramids to claim it was space aliens. He also made much ado about Mesoamerican civilizations also building pyramids - halfway across the world! But of course, these were more stepped pyramids, not the neatly geometric ones in Giza. If they were copying one another, they did a shitty job. But why the pyramid shape? Well, it is the easiest way to build a monument of any height. You can only go so high with stone columns and lintels - if you want a massive monument or temple, pyramid is just the way to go.
To a lot of people, though, this "alien tech" thing rings true - mostly because they have no idea how things work, and thus assume no one else does, either. A UFO believer looks at the pyramids and thinks, "there is no way I could lift one of these stones! Must be alien tech!"
Similarly, they are befuddled with how their cell phone actually works, so they assume the inside is magic bits and thus "alien tech." Space ships? Radar? Lasers? Complicated stuff - aliens must have invented it! And I suppose if you are one of those people who can barely drive their own car, this is comforting - after all, those egghead "scientists" (lab coats and clipboards!) are no smarter than you, and in fact, you now have the secret conspiracy theory data all your smart buddies know nothing about!
I noted before that as an Engineer, I am cursed with actually knowing something. And as a Patent Attorney, I have met and talked with the people who actually make all this "alien tech." There are thousands of Engineers who work on tiny bits and portions of computing devices - sometimes spending decades just to squeeze out a tiny bit of efficiency or performance out of a microchip. And growing up at the dawn of the PC age, I saw firsthand how the technology developed over time.
Sorry, no aliens - although geeky tech workers could be mistaken for them, on occasion.
And again, it is insulting to the legions of Engineers out there to dismiss their hard work as merely "reverse-engineering alien tech."
But if that doesn't convince you, look at it this way - if we had these crashed UFOs to "reverse engineer" then why in hell are we still using chemical reaction rockets to go into space? If the aliens have anti-gravity and warp drive, why the hell don't we use it?
Don't answer that - because the raging true believers just make up yet another bullshit conspiracy theory story to cover holes in their previous bullshit conspiracy theory story. It is a popular sport these days - critical thinking is no longer in fashion. Sadly, mainstream politicians engage in this sort of nonsense, too.
So why do people report these sightings? Why do people write books about it? Why do people buy t-shirts with aliens on them and hang out near "Area 51" and such? Well, for a lot of people, it is a harmless hobby. Deep down, they really don't believe aliens exist, but they collect all the memorabilia, just as Barbie enthusiasts collect hundreds of the dolls. As for the book authors, the motivation is more direct - money and lots of it. You sell a few books you can end up as rich as that Harry Potter lady. Give a few speeches, do some seminars, go on television - they pay you for all of this.
Hell, you can even start a religion over it. It's been done.
And every so often, the UFO-verse comes alive with a "breaking story" that this time, for sure, the "secret documents" are going to be released and we'll know the real story about space aliens and humanity will be saved! But like a Trump indictment (and conviction) these always end up being teaser stories that end up fading from view and you never hear more about it. Yea, the media loves a space alien story as much as they love a Trump indictment story. We are more likely to see a Trump indictment, but I would not even bet on that.
A reader writes, asking me what I think of these tropes (often used in Science Fiction) that aliens came to Earth and interbred with primitive human species (it's an alien thing, don't kink-shame!). Sci Fi authors have written stories about this - that the Gods on Mount Olympus were actually aliens from a crashed UFO, who bred with the local fauna. Or that primitive man was somehow "educated" by an alien obelisk as in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But here it is, 2023, and we haven't even been back to the moon! Never confuse science fiction with science fact.
Yes, it is fun to speculate about such things and read stories about them, but we should never confuse science fiction with science fact, or let conspiracy theories dominate our lives. The conspiracy buff is a sad and lonely person who drives away friends, family, and employers, all of whom rightfully assume that maybe the conspiracy buff is a little insane - or a lot so - and should be avoided. Left alone in his echo chamber, these bad ideas only amplify themselves. It becomes a perfect feedback loop.
Sorry, but there are no space aliens, no Sasquatch, no Loch Ness monster, and no Santa Claus. If you find these beliefs comforting (like religion - but don't get me started on that!) then so be it. But when you substitute wishful thinking for rational thinking, you will end up in a world of woe, in short order.
Act rationally in an irrational world.
UPDATE: The vaunted imminent disclosures about captured UFO tech have yet to materialize because, well, they don't exist. Another day, another click-bait story - and more sketchy stories from people who claim UFOs landed in their back yard (but they "forgot" to take pictures with their cell phones) or a military guy who claims he loaded "weapons" into a UFO and six people will back up his story! For some reason, these stories are forgotten about within one news cycle. It is just click-bait nonsense.
