2022 was a banner year for UFO nuts. And for Chinese spying on America.
The Biden administration, following in the footsteps of the Carter and Clinton administrations, had an interest in flying saucers. Conspiracy theorists embraced the release of Pentagon reports about UFOs, but the real conspiracy was down to earth and hiding in plain sight.
Last month, the Director of National Intelligence released a report on “unidentified aerial phenomena”, especially those in “restricted or sensitive airspace”. The report characterized 26 reports as “Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)” and 163 as “balloon or balloon-like entities.”
We didn’t have a plague of UFOs, but a massive Chinese aerial surveillance operation. We now know that Chinese spy balloons had previously targeted Navy facilities in Guam and Hawaii.
Democrats and their media had no interest in the balloons or UAS systems showing up in sensitive airspace. And the UFO nuts they allied with gleefully dismissed “weather balloons” as a military cover-up for flying saucers. But it was the UFOs that were the real cover-up.
When a Montana resident captured the first video of the Chinese spy balloon, he first thought it was a UFO. The Biden administration, which had been aware of the balloon all along, kept it secret until videos and photos by Montana residents forced their hand. For the first time, top officials had to go on record about Chinese spy balloons and to even shoot one of them down.
That was much more awkward than talking about UFOs. Advanced alien spaceships in the sky may be a silly thing to comment on, but they don’t expose their duplicity and cowardice. Letting Communist China operate surveillance devices near our air bases, planes and ships does.
What did China think it was doing? The Communist regime is gathering information on our aircraft and ships, on our pilots and personnel, in preparation for an expected war over Taiwan. They want to know as much as they can about everything from capabilities to reaction times. While we’re stumbling into a war and wandering in a scifi haze, they’re doing everything they can to get an edge on us so that when the war happens, they can win swiftly and decisively.
Beijing just assumed that our government would go on covering it up. And that was a good bet.
The Biden administration remained committed to a cover-up until the American public found out through crowdsourced social media means. That is something that Communist China could not have counted on. Or perhaps it assumed that, like Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Biden administration had the leverage with Big Tech to suppress any story. That may be technically true, but the social media censors were late to brand it as “disinformation” or “lacks context”.
China’s drone, balloon and other surveillance operations have often been passed off as UFOs.
UFO nuts went wild over videos of strange objects swarming Navy vessels in California, there was little interest when defense reports confirmed that they were drones or the presence of a Chinese ship in the area. The bold escalation of the Chinese using drones to spy on military vessels in our own waters was much less exciting than things from outer space.
In a session last year led by Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrats railed at defense officials and demanded that the Pentagon tell them about UFOs. “You need to show us, Congress and the American public, whose imaginations you have captured, you are willing to follow the facts where they lead,” Rep. Andre Carson, an Islamist, berated defense officials. “I am looking for you to assure us today that all conclusions are on the table.”
The conclusion that the Biden administration and Democrats didn’t want to discuss was little red men, not little green ones. And you don’t need to watch X-Files reruns to figure out why. While some ‘look to the skies’, down here on earth, China and, more importantly, the companies and investors who depend on it, own much of our political system and we fund much of its economy.
Last year, Senate members and intelligence community figures expressed concern about hundreds of Chinese drones showing up in restricted airspace in D.C. The drones were being made by a Chinese military company whose products are being funded by American taxpayers.
You can see why Democrats would rather talk about cattle mutilations and probes.
We already know that when the various UFO reports involved actual objects, these were unfamiliar military craft, either our own, those of the Russians, and more recently, Chinese.
The UFO obsession, like most conspiracy theorist nonsense, wasn’t “exposing” anything, it was helping our government and the military cover up what was really going on, not in space, but right here. And the government was more than happy to play along with all the UFO stuff.
The truth was more human and more depressing. Our government had developed a variety of aircraft while lying to the public. And then it lied about the deployment of similar technologies in our airspace by our enemies to avoid exposing its own weakness. We have spent trillions on a massive defense industry whose products the government is too afraid to actually use.
America has the world’s leading military and the world’s worst military leadership. Media reports say that Biden wanted to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon but, “Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Milley insisted that such a move would put civilians at risk.” This may be White House or media spin, but it’s also entirely plausible.
Contrary to the liberal stereotype of top defense officials as gung-ho warmongers in movies like Dr. Strangelove, top generals are much more likely to dissuade presidents from military action. Gen. Milley’s phone calls with China, which shocked many conservatives, were not an aberration. Top defense officials have taken on diplomatic roles, reaching out to foreign enemies to provide personal assurances and “defuse” tensions in ways far outside their mission.
Long before Russiagate, military action to take out Iran’s nuclear program by the Bush administration was sidelined by Chairman Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with a false National Intelligence Estimate which claimed that Iran wasn’t working on nukes.
Mullen instead spent his time urging the Bush administration to maintain a dialogue with Iran.
While no one in the military should welcome a war, a perverse culture among the top brass has come to see presidents as dangerous amateurs who should be prevented from starting them.
Why is the military brass doing this? Because they can’t fight and don’t intend to even try.
After the Cold War, the political generals edged out the few warfighters and settled in to build long careers of attending D.C. cocktail parties before getting jobs with defense contractors. The peacetime generals spend a lot of money but have no idea how to actually win a war. After 9/11, much as after Pearl Harbor, they should have been cleared out and replaced with fighters. Instead, the political brass dug in even deeper and remade the military in their own image.
That’s why the military has been steadily losing every war game to China. It’s why Afghanistan and Iraq were prolonged exercises in trendy theories and appeasement that killed thousands. A war with China would be a much more catastrophic disaster and lead to a serious reckoning. That, and not the loss of many of our pilots and ships, is why they’re desperate to prevent it.
It is in this spirit that not only the White House and top Democrats, but military brass were willing to put up with close Chinese surveillance, even when it risks costing thousands of lives and losing a war, to avoid escalating tensions with Communist China. The appeasement is coming out of the Pentagon. And it amounts to a national security crisis and a preemptive surrender.
The conspiracy theories have it exactly backward. The real threat isn’t coming from outer space, but from across the water. The military isn’t trying to start a war, it’s frantically trying to stop one. And if that means passing off Chinese spy gear as UFO’s, it’ll be far from the first time.
Every year, Kecksburg, Pennsylvania holds a UFO festival. The effort by a small town to attract attention dates back to a day in 1965 when Americans saw a fireball in the sky that eventually landed in the area. The authorities closed off the area and claimed that there was nothing there. Local UFO fanatics spent decades obsessed with government conspiracy about alien landings.
50 years later, the government revealed that it had been a Soviet satellite or spacecraft.
Thank you for reading.
The Biden administration, following in the footsteps of the Carter and Clinton administrations, had an interest in flying saucers. Conspiracy theorists embraced the release of Pentagon reports about UFOs, but the real conspiracy was down to earth and hiding in plain sight.
We didn’t have a plague of UFOs, but a massive Chinese aerial surveillance operation. We now know that Chinese spy balloons had previously targeted Navy facilities in Guam and Hawaii.
Democrats and their media had no interest in the balloons or UAS systems showing up in sensitive airspace. And the UFO nuts they allied with gleefully dismissed “weather balloons” as a military cover-up for flying saucers. But it was the UFOs that were the real cover-up.
When a Montana resident captured the first video of the Chinese spy balloon, he first thought it was a UFO. The Biden administration, which had been aware of the balloon all along, kept it secret until videos and photos by Montana residents forced their hand. For the first time, top officials had to go on record about Chinese spy balloons and to even shoot one of them down.
That was much more awkward than talking about UFOs. Advanced alien spaceships in the sky may be a silly thing to comment on, but they don’t expose their duplicity and cowardice. Letting Communist China operate surveillance devices near our air bases, planes and ships does.
What did China think it was doing? The Communist regime is gathering information on our aircraft and ships, on our pilots and personnel, in preparation for an expected war over Taiwan. They want to know as much as they can about everything from capabilities to reaction times. While we’re stumbling into a war and wandering in a scifi haze, they’re doing everything they can to get an edge on us so that when the war happens, they can win swiftly and decisively.
Beijing just assumed that our government would go on covering it up. And that was a good bet.
The Biden administration remained committed to a cover-up until the American public found out through crowdsourced social media means. That is something that Communist China could not have counted on. Or perhaps it assumed that, like Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Biden administration had the leverage with Big Tech to suppress any story. That may be technically true, but the social media censors were late to brand it as “disinformation” or “lacks context”.
China’s drone, balloon and other surveillance operations have often been passed off as UFOs.
UFO nuts went wild over videos of strange objects swarming Navy vessels in California, there was little interest when defense reports confirmed that they were drones or the presence of a Chinese ship in the area. The bold escalation of the Chinese using drones to spy on military vessels in our own waters was much less exciting than things from outer space.
In a session last year led by Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrats railed at defense officials and demanded that the Pentagon tell them about UFOs. “You need to show us, Congress and the American public, whose imaginations you have captured, you are willing to follow the facts where they lead,” Rep. Andre Carson, an Islamist, berated defense officials. “I am looking for you to assure us today that all conclusions are on the table.”
The conclusion that the Biden administration and Democrats didn’t want to discuss was little red men, not little green ones. And you don’t need to watch X-Files reruns to figure out why. While some ‘look to the skies’, down here on earth, China and, more importantly, the companies and investors who depend on it, own much of our political system and we fund much of its economy.
Last year, Senate members and intelligence community figures expressed concern about hundreds of Chinese drones showing up in restricted airspace in D.C. The drones were being made by a Chinese military company whose products are being funded by American taxpayers.
You can see why Democrats would rather talk about cattle mutilations and probes.
We already know that when the various UFO reports involved actual objects, these were unfamiliar military craft, either our own, those of the Russians, and more recently, Chinese.
The UFO obsession, like most conspiracy theorist nonsense, wasn’t “exposing” anything, it was helping our government and the military cover up what was really going on, not in space, but right here. And the government was more than happy to play along with all the UFO stuff.
The truth was more human and more depressing. Our government had developed a variety of aircraft while lying to the public. And then it lied about the deployment of similar technologies in our airspace by our enemies to avoid exposing its own weakness. We have spent trillions on a massive defense industry whose products the government is too afraid to actually use.
America has the world’s leading military and the world’s worst military leadership. Media reports say that Biden wanted to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon but, “Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Milley insisted that such a move would put civilians at risk.” This may be White House or media spin, but it’s also entirely plausible.
Contrary to the liberal stereotype of top defense officials as gung-ho warmongers in movies like Dr. Strangelove, top generals are much more likely to dissuade presidents from military action. Gen. Milley’s phone calls with China, which shocked many conservatives, were not an aberration. Top defense officials have taken on diplomatic roles, reaching out to foreign enemies to provide personal assurances and “defuse” tensions in ways far outside their mission.
Long before Russiagate, military action to take out Iran’s nuclear program by the Bush administration was sidelined by Chairman Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with a false National Intelligence Estimate which claimed that Iran wasn’t working on nukes.
Mullen instead spent his time urging the Bush administration to maintain a dialogue with Iran.
While no one in the military should welcome a war, a perverse culture among the top brass has come to see presidents as dangerous amateurs who should be prevented from starting them.
Why is the military brass doing this? Because they can’t fight and don’t intend to even try.
After the Cold War, the political generals edged out the few warfighters and settled in to build long careers of attending D.C. cocktail parties before getting jobs with defense contractors. The peacetime generals spend a lot of money but have no idea how to actually win a war. After 9/11, much as after Pearl Harbor, they should have been cleared out and replaced with fighters. Instead, the political brass dug in even deeper and remade the military in their own image.
That’s why the military has been steadily losing every war game to China. It’s why Afghanistan and Iraq were prolonged exercises in trendy theories and appeasement that killed thousands. A war with China would be a much more catastrophic disaster and lead to a serious reckoning. That, and not the loss of many of our pilots and ships, is why they’re desperate to prevent it.
It is in this spirit that not only the White House and top Democrats, but military brass were willing to put up with close Chinese surveillance, even when it risks costing thousands of lives and losing a war, to avoid escalating tensions with Communist China. The appeasement is coming out of the Pentagon. And it amounts to a national security crisis and a preemptive surrender.
The conspiracy theories have it exactly backward. The real threat isn’t coming from outer space, but from across the water. The military isn’t trying to start a war, it’s frantically trying to stop one. And if that means passing off Chinese spy gear as UFO’s, it’ll be far from the first time.
Every year, Kecksburg, Pennsylvania holds a UFO festival. The effort by a small town to attract attention dates back to a day in 1965 when Americans saw a fireball in the sky that eventually landed in the area. The authorities closed off the area and claimed that there was nothing there. Local UFO fanatics spent decades obsessed with government conspiracy about alien landings.
50 years later, the government revealed that it had been a Soviet satellite or spacecraft.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Thank you for reading.
Comments
Just another shiny object to distract us from
ReplyDeletethe real dirty business. Why change when it
works so well?
Thomas
It can't be both? I've no doubt you're correct in your assumption that the Chinese have bluffed their way past our military leaders, peeping through our windows at will. At the same time, the aerial phenomenon captured on Navy video exceeding any known physics lends credence to the "conspiracy theory" that we're not alone in this universe.
ReplyDeletePost a Comment