Sure, but suppose you have a flying saucer that you would like to be able to use for some missions. If you release a fragment of the flying saucer and say “it’s aliens guys”, this maybe means that when other people see a flying saucer later they don’t know it’s you.
Press X to doubt. First, the details on flying saucer fragments have not been disclosed (as far as we know), so this strategy was not attempted. Second, though this is not a knockdown argument given that we’re dealing with the U.S. government, it would be an incredibly dumb strategy to build a new jet and then claim it’s a UFO in order to trick the Chinese government into thinking you’re not running missions in their airspace. The Chinese might not know about it, and the chances that the equipment you possess are U.S. made are higher from the Chinese perspective than if you had said nothing. It strikes me as conspiratorial thinking that the intel community would disclose its own equipment to the world, with such a preposterous explanation, as a sort of “feint”.
It strikes me as conspiratorial thinking that the intel community would disclose its own equipment to the world, with such a preposterous explanation, as a sort of “feint”.
So, I think “conspiratorial thinking” is a weird thing to say here. The existence of a conspiracy is not in doubt, and their willingness to lie to the public shouldn’t be either. If you’re not willing to engage with conspiratorial thinking when considering a literal conspiracy, how are you going to track reality?
That said, is this a tactical or strategic error, and thus unlikely? Sure, that seems like a plausible position to have, but then it’s at “mistake” levels of plausibility instead of “impossibile” levels of plausibility.
It just does not seem like something that the U.S. government would be willing to do. When we want to feed an enemy a mix of information and disinformation, we do it by using a double agent, not by publishing genuine classified info about our capabilities in the media with an asterisk that it’s alien technology. The intel bureaucracy would not OK something both this stupid and unusual/complicated.
A steelman might be that, since they didn’t actually publish the tech, this is an elaborate and historically funny scam to make UAF personnel in other countries believe they might be dealing with alien craft instead of NATO craft, whenever they come across something. But then the update would be about how complicated a lie the U.S. is willing to feed its own media, with all the different people apparently involved in confirming this story.
I think an important aspect is also that the last thing that the Intelligence Community wants is Congress trying to investigate what secret programs it has.
They don’t want congressmen asking “You don’t manage to give us a financial audit for the money we give you and it seems you are funding strange programs outside our purview.”
Press X to doubt. First, the details on flying saucer fragments have not been disclosed (as far as we know), so this strategy was not attempted. Second, though this is not a knockdown argument given that we’re dealing with the U.S. government, it would be an incredibly dumb strategy to build a new jet and then claim it’s a UFO in order to trick the Chinese government into thinking you’re not running missions in their airspace. The Chinese might not know about it, and the chances that the equipment you possess are U.S. made are higher from the Chinese perspective than if you had said nothing. It strikes me as conspiratorial thinking that the intel community would disclose its own equipment to the world, with such a preposterous explanation, as a sort of “feint”.
So, I think “conspiratorial thinking” is a weird thing to say here. The existence of a conspiracy is not in doubt, and their willingness to lie to the public shouldn’t be either. If you’re not willing to engage with conspiratorial thinking when considering a literal conspiracy, how are you going to track reality?
That said, is this a tactical or strategic error, and thus unlikely? Sure, that seems like a plausible position to have, but then it’s at “mistake” levels of plausibility instead of “impossibile” levels of plausibility.
It just does not seem like something that the U.S. government would be willing to do. When we want to feed an enemy a mix of information and disinformation, we do it by using a double agent, not by publishing genuine classified info about our capabilities in the media with an asterisk that it’s alien technology. The intel bureaucracy would not OK something both this stupid and unusual/complicated.
A steelman might be that, since they didn’t actually publish the tech, this is an elaborate and historically funny scam to make UAF personnel in other countries believe they might be dealing with alien craft instead of NATO craft, whenever they come across something. But then the update would be about how complicated a lie the U.S. is willing to feed its own media, with all the different people apparently involved in confirming this story.
I think an important aspect is also that the last thing that the Intelligence Community wants is Congress trying to investigate what secret programs it has.
They don’t want congressmen asking “You don’t manage to give us a financial audit for the money we give you and it seems you are funding strange programs outside our purview.”