The Extraordinary UAP File Distraction
Of the many distractions the current administration has used to divert attention from the theft of the American republic and the fallout from the Epstein Files, the UAP Files release may be the most insulting. I mean that genuinely: as a newly technological species, we look to the stars and want to believe we are not alone. We yearn for our understanding of this vast, cold universe to expand, for some meaning that survives empirical scrutiny. This release cheapens that impulse, feeding real hope with more blurry photos and videos of what could be anything. My prediction: no conclusion will come, and the same questions we’ve always harbored will go on unanswered.
I’m pessimistic, not only because of who is curating this release, but because of the extraordinarily high bar any claim of contact with intelligent alien life must clear. Carl Sagan popularized the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” - one worth remembering in an era rife with misinformation and what philosopher Harry Frankfurt called bullshit in the strictly technical sense. Disclosure of intelligent alien life is orders of magnitude more extraordinary than debunking even the most persistent conspiracy theory. The Fermi Paradox still reigns. Our ability to survey the cosmic neighborhood keeps improving - we can pick out extrasolar planets, hunt for biosignatures and technosignatures, and may soon find real evidence of biological processes elsewhere. But evidence that technologically superior beings are visiting our planet, in person or by drone, remains elusive; even the most driven researchers in the field still lack anything convincing. What we have are blobs, blurs, tic-tacs, and indistinct black delta shapes we can’t even say with certainty aren’t of this Earth.
Consider the challenge the cold, inhospitable universe poses to living beings. The laws of physics turn light speed - fantastically fast by any human measure - into a crawl against the sheer vastness of space. Evidence of our own technological progress spreads from Earth at that same speed, meaning only civilizations within roughly 100 to 150 light years could know anything about us. They would then need to recognize the signs, care enough to investigate, and actually make the trip. Even if they’ve found a way around the cosmic speed limit, the resources required would be immense. And for what? Any speculation beyond these constraints is wishful thinking. Until intelligent life wants to reveal itself unambiguously, we’ll keep grasping at the same straws.
What incenses me is that the Trump Administration is playing with the childlike hope so many of us hold - that intelligent life is out there, visiting us, perhaps even helping us avoid destroying ourselves. Shaped by decades of science fiction, we want to believe in a future where humanity unites after contact and sheds a more primal, unjust past. Even Ronald Reagan held that hope. Here, it’s being exploited by people who want nothing more than to avoid bad press and dodge accountability for their own conduct. Until they disclose genuinely extraordinary evidence, I’ll treat this as a stunt. I’m not holding my breath.