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Lester Nare: UFOs & US Government
79 Plays2 months ago
Lester Nare is the founder of UAPCaucus, UAPCaucus.com
@LesterNare
Email Isaiah at [email protected]
Glossary:
UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) – This is the current preferred term over UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) to include not just objects but also other unexplainable phenomena.
UAP Caucus – A civilian volunteer organization founded by Lester Nare that mirrors the Congressional UAP Caucus, focusing on transparency and accountability around UAP issues.
Congressional UAP Caucus – A group within Congress that seeks greater transparency and policy development around UAP phenomena.
UAP Disclosure Act of 2024 – A legislative bill introduced to address allegations regarding UAPs, transparency, and claims of recovered non-human technology.
UFO Task Force, AME SOG, AARO (All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office) – Various governmental organizations and task forces created to investigate and centralize UAP sightings and data.
Crash Retrievals – Alleged secret programs that aim to retrieve and study downed UFO/UAP crafts and potentially reverse-engineer their technology.
David Grusch – A whistleblower involved in the UAP hearings in 2023, alleging that non-human craft have been recovered and reverse-engineered.
Tic Tac Case – Refers to a 2004 incident involving Navy pilots who reported seeing a fast-moving object resembling a Tic Tac near the USS Nimitz.
2016 Wikileaks Emails – Refers to leaked communications that allegedly revealed conversations between political figures and proponents of UFO disclosure, like Tom DeLong and John Podesta.
To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTSA) – An organization founded by musician Tom DeLonge to advance UFO disclosure and explore related scientific inquiries.
Lou Elizondo – A former military intelligence officer who led the Pentagon's UFO program and became a key figure in pushing for public disclosure.
Eminent Domain (in context of UAP Disclosure Act) – The legal concept allowing the government to seize private property (in this case, alleged non-human materials) for public use.
SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) – Experts brought in by organizations, like those in the UAP community, to support research and policy development around the phenomena.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to UAP Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
As we convene here, UAP are in our airspace, but they are grossly under-reported. These sightings are not rare or isolated, they are routine. We don't know where they come from, who made them, or how they operate.
Government Secrecy and Oversight Issues
00:00:12
Speaker
The U.S. government is operating with secrecy above congressional oversights with regards to UAPs.
00:00:21
Speaker
The United States government has gathered a great deal of information about UAPs over many decades, but has refused to share it with the American people.
Phenomena Observation and Investigation
00:00:30
Speaker
That is wrong, and additionally, it breeds mistrust. their The controller told us that these objects had been observed for over two weeks, coming down from over 80,000 feet, rapidly descending to 20,000 feet, hanging out for hours, and then going straight back up for those who don't realize above 80,000 feet of space. What is true?
00:00:50
Speaker
And i'm I'm actually being serious here is is that there's footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are. We can't explain how they move, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so you know I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.
Isaiah's 'UFO Focus' Podcast Revival
00:01:25
Speaker
Hi everyone, and welcome back to UFO Focus. I'm your host, Isaiah. Now, if you happen to be among the very small number of people who actually tuned in for my first podcast with guest Micah Hanks, first of all, thank you, and second, ah you might be wondering why it's taken me about half a year to get a second episode up.
00:01:49
Speaker
Well, there are a few answers, but most of them are personal. So let's just say I kind of lost steam for a while. But the good news is I've got a new head of steam to keep it going, and some awesome guests lined up for the near
Guest Introduction: Lester Naray
00:02:04
Speaker
future. Awesome guests like today's guest, Lester Naray, the creator of UAP caucus at uapcaucus.com, an organization pushing for government transparency around UFOs.
00:02:19
Speaker
Lester is a relative newcomer, as am I, to the UFO topic. And in my opinion, he's exactly the kind of new blood, fresh perspective, new energy this topic desperately needs. Lester is, as they say here in Massachusetts, wicked smat, and ambitious, motivated, clear headed, and on top of it all, a heck of a nice guy.
00:02:45
Speaker
I'm going to let Lester introduce himself in the interview, but a few quick things. First, for those of you who are newcomers yourselves to the UFO topic, you're especially welcome here, but just so you know, while I try to keep these interviews accessible to everyone, my guest Lester is someone who really gets, on a deep level, a lot of the details around how this topic is playing out politically, especially in Congress.
00:03:12
Speaker
My advice is don't sweat it if you don't get everything we're talking about immediately. And to help you out, I've included a little glossary of some of the terms we throw around in the show notes.
00:03:25
Speaker
Almost. Last. Thanks for everyone
Engagement with Audience
00:03:28
Speaker
listening. Please subscribe and if you like the podcast, help get the word out. I'm in this to share solid conversations about this topic and I'd love for more people to get to listen to. Last. Last. I'm interested in first-hand UFO experiences. So if you've seen a UFO or think you have and want to tell me about it, I'd love to hear your stories.
00:03:51
Speaker
You can reach me with those stories or feedback on the podcast or just to say hi at UFO focus podcast at proton.me. That's UFO focus podcast at proton dot m.me or on X or Twitter at UFO focus. Thanks again for listening and please enjoy my conversation with Lester Naray.
00:04:18
Speaker
Okay. Well, why don't we just start with, why don't you introduce yourself? Wait, first of all, your name has been so badly butchered in all the podcasts. It's Lester Nare. Do I have the accent right? The way it's pronounced, it should be spelled with an accent a goo over the last E just for the Nare as opposed to Nair. Oh, it's Nare.
00:04:42
Speaker
It's an RA
Naray's UAP Caucus and Advocacy
00:04:43
Speaker
as the as that's a ah the pronunciation. My family is Zimbabwean, and naturally, that's how we pronounce that. So, um you know, if you look at our capital city, for example, Harare, H-A-R-A-R-E, it's Harare, not Harare. So anyway, that's a, but I appreciate you asking.
00:05:03
Speaker
Naare rhymes with Harare. Yep. Got it. Very good. Well, Lester, why don't you just introduce yourself however you would kind of like to with, you know, your relationship to the UAP topic. And then let's go into then I'd like to hear about UAP caucus. But why don't you first and just introduce yourself however you'd like.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, not a problem. So for folks who are coming from the UAP space, they'll know me as the sort of founder of UAP caucus, the civilian volunteer organization, which is meant to mirror the sort of policy objectives of the congressional UAP p caucus, which is just focused on greater transparency and accountability around the subject of UAP.
00:05:48
Speaker
I'm outside of my work at UAP caucus. I'm the co-founder and chief operating officer of a real estate technology startup. um We focus on down payment assistance and we also are doing master plan community development. We have one major development in the Midwest that's about to go online. So my day to day is around dealing with one of the most ah popular things that I actually end up getting on my UAP content, which is I can't afford rent, the economy is terrible, I can't buy a house, why would I care about, you know, the possibility that nonhuman intelligence exists. So it's an interesting juxtaposition between something that is extremely grounded and relevant to everybody, and something that is maybe a little bit more abstract, but is equally as relevant to everybody.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, well, my day job is writing about the nonprofit sector, so I can i can relate to having having you know different different
Naray's Personal UAP Experiences
00:06:43
Speaker
interests. um in in what What made you decide to spend as much time, energy, and intellectual you know power um exploring this issue as as you have?
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I get this ask this question, ah you know, quite often and I don't know if I'm giving a great answer. It's it's not really a singular thing. and It's maybe ah an an amalgamation of different component parts. And let me maybe give a little bit of history on on me that provides maybe some context as to how I ended up in this situation. So um the probably the three inciting incidents for me, that at least made me more predisposed to being open to thinking about this um are
00:07:31
Speaker
um Growing up, one of the things that my dad and I would do that wasn't studying for school or playing soccer was flying model planes and model rockets. And so I have really fond memories of that growing up. And I think that began my interest generally in aviation in space. um I've always been just curious about space as a concept. So that's sort of like the substrate maybe or the the foundation by which, you know, the other two incident sort of build off of that. So the the second one is, um much like many folks who probably end up gravitating towards this,
00:08:09
Speaker
I did have a sighting in 2011. I was living in North Carolina at the time. ah I was a sophomore at Princeton. I was at home for the holidays. And um it happened over you know twice over a two or three week period. I don't quite remember. It was relatively mundane you know at the time. I didn't know what it was. ah It was sort of a typical amber orb.
00:08:38
Speaker
citing, you know, the orb is one of the most known morphologies that people see. it It was weird because it was stationary. It was kind of blinking in and out. There was one, but it was kind of more than one. So it had this sort of weird, again, flight trajectory, just appearance behavior. We lived on the flight path to Raleigh-Durham Airport. So I was very familiar with the normal flight pass. And as I mentioned, my dad and I used to fly model planes rockets. So I had a predisposition to understanding what prosaic flight would look like. The nearest military base to us was Fort Bragg, which was maybe about 90 minutes or or so south. So that sighting at the time, I honestly didn't think anything about it and kind of was just like, huh, that's weird. And, you know, just went about my normal life as per usual.
Impact of Media and Whistleblower Revelations
00:09:30
Speaker
Um,
00:09:32
Speaker
The thing that probably moved me into the, okay, this is like now an issue that I can approach tactically is the 2016 WikiLeaks emails because within them, and the reason why is I've always been a politico or a policy wonk generally. So just, I love politics. And again, this comes from being Zimbabwean, you know, you you had, you didn't have the luxury of ignoring politics, because in ZIM, politics was, at least again, in the sort of 80s and 90s, was literally a matter of life and death. um So although I was born in Montreal of Zimbabwean parents, so I didn't spend a lot of time growing up there. That context in terms of how I was raised made me, you know, we talk about politics all the time in our house.
00:10:20
Speaker
um So I was already very tuned in ah generally. And then the the WikiLeaks email dumps was interesting for anybody who was into politics and policy at the time, because there's a whole variety of implications to them. But within that were some of the emails between the likes of, you know, Tom DeLong and Podesta and some of the Joint Chiefs around this idea of disclosure. And by this point, you know, I was a very online person. I'd been spending a lot of time on the Internet growing up as a kid. That's how I ended up in tech today. So when you were sort of a very online kid growing up in the late 90s, early 2000s,
00:10:59
Speaker
you know, you were deep in form culture and all these things. And so a lot of the core story or the core UFO story about crash retrievals and reverse engineering are peppered all throughout sort of the very online internet culture. And it has been that way for quite some time. i was yeah Long time. So I was aware of that stuff, not because of my siting and making that connection, but just because it was a ah part of the ether of the type of content that just was online in these sort of then the in the internet culture. 2016 was when I kind of was like, okay, there's this sort of tactical political policy wonk side of me. There's this sort of tech internet, you know, side and that was, excuse me, the intersection of both, where
00:11:46
Speaker
I felt like, OK, there is now a pathway for me to think about engaging this in this from from just if there are people having policy conversations about it, like that's how I can frame the conversation. Obviously, shortly after that, there was all the rumors about To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, which was Tom DeLonge's outfit to, you know, ah you move the disclosure, quote unquote disclosure conversation forward. And then lo and behold, we have Lou Elizondo, Chris Mellon,
00:12:14
Speaker
ah The appearance of a tip and that whole story come out in the New York Times about a year later Yeah, and much like for many people that you know the gravitas of the New York Times the the documentation It was an official Pentagon program. I think moved it over the edge into okay like now it's a matter of sort of parsing the details. I think the last note I'll just make is so the three sort of inciting things were growing up with a predisposition to it, to aerospace generally, my own sighting in 2011, which i I could be prosaic, could be anomalous, I really don't know. 2016 is what sort of made me look back at that sighting in a new context and a new light. And then
00:12:56
Speaker
you know but with the 2017 New York Times article that kind of made it ah feel like this was a different conversation. I will end with this note, which is I didn't really go public, quote unquote, as either a talking head or just conversationally until 2022, 2023. A little bit in 2022, I started more private conversations.
00:13:23
Speaker
um And then in 2023, when Grush came out in then ah the original, ah David Grush, who was the sort of quote unquote whistleblower that came forward in the hearing ah in July of 2023, and has obviously been all over the news, when he first came out in the debrief,
00:13:41
Speaker
um At that point, there had been several years of legislation that had actually in policy that had been passed that was related to the subject. There was no coverage. There was no analysis. That's right. No think tanks. there' was There was nothing. And there was a significant amount of stuff to sink your teeth into. And at that point, I was just like, you know, if not me, then who? Because I just had a unique combination of having the understanding of politics and policy, having the understanding of the sort of history of the subject. And having the sort of capacity to produce content. I had been working in media at that point for for several years. So I just had the resources, the time, the skill set, the the point of reference that felt like, let me just put my voice out there to have
UAP Caucus' Role in Research and Policy
00:14:27
Speaker
the conversation. And lo and behold, it's taken a much greater hold than I could have possibly imagined ah when I just first started making TikToks for fun.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, the subject has a way of doing that to some people, I think. I'm one of them as well. um Okay, and so what is UAP caucus? what are What is its mission? What are you trying to do with with this organization? So I think it's it's really twofold. If you look at any, generally, if we zoom out outside of the UAP topic, any nascent political or social movement, there are certain aspects and pieces of infrastructure that exist for any of them that have found a foothold and have found success.
00:15:06
Speaker
This comes from policy, think tanks, just general political advocacy. um None of that infrastructure really existed. There's been some historical efforts, obviously, with some of the stuff, you know, from the likes of ah Stephen Bassett, a Danny Sheehan, or Stephen Greer.
00:15:24
Speaker
um But generally speaking, they've more so been the interface between former government officials and information gathering and sort of laying the groundwork that the narrative is there and the story is real. And there's sort of a separate aspect, which is how does this impact how members of Congress think, the rest of the DC blob? what what is What are the policy and governing implications of the reality that's sort of been laid down prior? so One of the primary functions is providing sort of policy and governance thought leadership, particularly for members of Congress and their staffers, as well as the associated contractor community and surrounding ancillary services that exist in the d c the DC sphere. um And as a part of that,
00:16:16
Speaker
providing public education about what actually is happening, which we're not seeing really much out of the mainstream media. Independent media I think does a better job. But one of the things I've always talked about is there are no on ramps. There's not a lot of on ramps in the independent media space or the education space for UAP in that A lot of independent media channels that talk about the subject are talking about the day to day, yes, in the weeds details and the nuance, which is very important. I always talk about it's like that's the bleeding edge of the conversation. But the caboose, which is 99% of people who aren't in the weeds, don't even know about the New York Times 2017 article or who Lou Elizondo is or who Dr. Kirkpatrick is or any of these kind of details. So a huge function is
00:17:05
Speaker
creating a door and on-ramp for people to get introduced and understand the scope of where we actually are, again from a policy perspective. And the sort of second core function we we really focus on is there's a whole I don't, you know, this word sort of turns people off sometimes, but it's it's it's really what it, there's a whole industry that is now arising around the subject of UAP, whether you're talking about scientific research institutions, whether you're talking about private aerospace from a study or an aviation safety perspective. There is, you know, talking about folks who are looking to, who may or may not believe the allegations that there are.
00:17:44
Speaker
physical craft and retrieval. So looking at it from a technology acquisition perspective, there's a whole number of new players that are both very public and both not very public that are dipping their toes and trying to figure out how to get a foothold. So one of the things we do is provide technical and operational support given our sort of technology and software background to some of these organizations that are starting to come in. As an example, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics is the largest trade organization for sort of aerospace professionals globally space in the US.
00:18:19
Speaker
I think they have over 40,000 members. And they, two years ago, ah introduced a new integration and outreach committee specific for UAP. So these committees will look at any variety of different areas. You could have you know drone, next generation propulsion, ah you know ah reporting systems.
00:18:35
Speaker
One of them is now specific to UAP. We provided technical support for them to set up their new website. They actually put out a great ah article around strategies for detection, characterization, and evaluation that we helped them put together. They're using that as a recruiting tool because the AIAA will help with federal agencies and other surrounding contractors who are looking to staff subject matter experts around different subjects, now including UAP. And so there's been a huge influx of SMEs now going to AIAA, the UAP integration outreach committee that are now being farmed out to support a whole variety of new upstarts and research programs that are happening in this area. So I think again, there's, there's, there's sort of a, there's so much work to do, because it's such a nascent thing that doesn't have really good structure to it. So we're trying to help where we can in a variety of ways. so
00:19:29
Speaker
Yeah, um really interesting. And would you describe UAP caucus as, is there an advocacy component in the sense, does does does the organization advocate directly for um transparency around UAP, for example?
00:19:46
Speaker
Yes, the way I've sort of described is we're kind of like a skunk works program in that we kind of do a little bit of a variety of different things that are at the bleeding edge. One of those is for sure political advocacy. um As an example, we just spent a couple of days in D.C.
00:20:02
Speaker
oh pushing for the greater awareness and support for the UAP Disclosure Act of 2024 without getting too much into the weeds. you know Obviously, there's it's this big UFO disclosure bill that makes direct allegations that there is effectively a a an extra governmental entity or persons in control of both materials and sort of are getting funding from Congress without providing oversight and also cutting out the executive branch from oversight, again, around this allegation that there are crash retrievals and reverse engineering happening. And, you know, I think one of the things that we really try to focus on is
00:20:53
Speaker
Throughout everything we do, the origin, what is the origin of UAP is never a front of mind. Because our whole theory of the case is the origin for the work that we do, it is an important question in the larger conversation. But for the work that we do, the origin actually doesn't matter because regardless of the origin, the implications from a policy and governance perspective are all still true based on the fact that we are seeing tangible data that represents a technology that is either next generation or beyond the next generation. So even if that's coming from a foreign adversary, that has huge geopolitical implications, not only for how we look at our military actions abroad, especially in this current time period, we're seeing rising tensions in the Middle East, in the South China Sea with Taiwan, obviously with Ukraine. um And then these incursions that are happening over the homeland
00:21:47
Speaker
It doesn't really matter what the origin is from a governance and policy perspective per se where we are now where we're still trying to get people to understand that it is a real issue that requires real focus and attention once there is that collective understanding, we can start to have more nuanced conversations about, okay, well, there's actually a two to 4% bucket over here of this stuff that's really, really anomalous and is potentially not our own black budget programs or the Chinese or the Russians or some non-governmental entity with a lot of money. And again, that continues to be the allegation. um But
00:22:33
Speaker
in terms of like, the DC blob, most folks are not there yet in terms of understanding. So we have advocacy is really they it's because ultimately, we're just saying there's information and more of it should be made public full stop. Yeah.
Legislation and Political Challenges
00:22:50
Speaker
So, okay, so I'm gonna change gears a little bit here. So, okay, so there's the UAPDA, the UAP Disclosure Act, which was sponsored by Senators Chuck Schumer and, is it Mike Rounds, I think? That is correct. Yeah. And um was sponsored two years in a row, big dozens of pages of legislation about UFOs, UAP, refer yeah references to non-human intelligence ah throughout the document.
00:23:20
Speaker
Then you know we we back up. there was um there will There have been all sorts of legislative efforts around this issue since around 2017. There was the creation of the UAP task force. There was the creation of AIMSOG and AERO. And AERO still exists as like a government UFO office.
00:23:47
Speaker
um You know, there was heavy involvement in that by Senator, another Senator, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. um ah Marco Rubio has been very, Senator Marco Rubio has been very involved in this and then there's a bunch of legislators in the House who've been involved on this topic.
00:24:03
Speaker
um
00:24:07
Speaker
and And part of what's maddening is that most of this stuff has not gotten any real coverage by sort of mainstream recognized um prestigious media. um So, you know, sometimes a report gets some coverage or something, but there really hasn't been, the media hasn't really sort of, in my opinion, informed the public along the way that, oh, like,
00:24:35
Speaker
you know, government's creating UFO offices for some reason, you know. um I guess my question to you, that the big question to me with all of this is um what do these, especially these senators who have been so active on on this legislation, what what do they think is going on? Do you have a sense of that?
00:25:05
Speaker
I think it's, i I mean, everything that you said is, is absolutely spot on. It's been fascinating to just again, see the, there's no beat reporter on this, you know, that's, you know, other than maybe you could argue Matt Laszlo.
00:25:22
Speaker
at Ask a poll has been the only real, you know, ah let me actually give a shout out also to Joe Khalil at News Nation, who and as well as a Gotti Schwartz at NBC. Those are probably the three that have put their own capital within their own organizations, you know, with the exception of maxi runs his own thing to to continue to cover the story.
00:25:47
Speaker
um In my view, right, so this really started because senators in particular in the 2018-2019 time period, we're starting to receive classified briefings from, you know, these made the Navy pilots that were saying, hey, we're seeing this stuff and we're not getting the support that we need. I think for a lot of senators, and this is just kind of parsing through the tenor demeanor and way in which they have engaged by way of their staffers with us and their public statements. I think the initial entry point has really been
00:26:25
Speaker
These are serious people that we entrust with the defense of our country, not just the war fighters, but also members of the executive branch above them that again have allegedly gone and spoken to these senators, um which again, Senator Marco Rubio has said for the record publicly, so that's it's not conjecture. um And I think that, so there's a couple of things here. I think number one, the problem is so enormous that they need to start somewhere. And so the creation of Arrow as an example by Senator Gillibrand was her effort to say, look, if there are these illegal special access purple Nova, whatever programs that don't have congressional oversight, don't have a reporting mechanism, how do we
00:27:15
Speaker
take this sort of really intractable problem and create some sort of functional structure to adjudicate it. And I think that was the entry point for the creation of Arrow, because now there's an official Pentagon office that she can haul into Congress and wag her finger at and say, where's the stuff? And that can begin sort of to be the reconciliation the organization that helps with the reconciliation process. So I think part of the entry point has just been the problem is so big we don't know where to start. So we're just going to start by creating the infrastructure to deal with the problem.
Public Education and Historical Context
00:27:46
Speaker
So that I think is one piece. Well, there's sort of, i'm sorry to interrupt you, but please yeah, there's sort of, I was just going to say like, there's sort of two problems, right? There's one is like a sort of, you know, allegation by
00:28:01
Speaker
by various you know people and parties of a secret program. But then the other is just continued reporting of unidentified things in our airspace. um and And the two aren't necessarily the same thing or you know or or you don't need to believe in one to sort of believe in the other. I mean, the... the reporting observ the observance of unidentified stuff in our airspace is a fact. What it is is is is up for debate, of course, but um now I'm not sure where I was going with that. But anyway, there's those two things. um Yeah, that's that's that's a great note because so I agree with you 100%. The two sides of this conversation are there's stuff flying around and we don't know what it is. And then the other side of the conversation is
00:28:58
Speaker
We do know what it is. It's this anomalous NHI tech that we've been recovering for decades. So like, you know, one version of the story has sort of been argued at, oh, that's the obfuscation that they're doing to avoid the real story, which is these, you know, super secret programs. I think the set, the the creation of Arrow.
00:29:17
Speaker
And if you look at their two mandates for arrow, it was two things. One was to centralize all of the data across all of the Department of Defense components, as well as the intelligence community to create a universal unified data set of what are we seeing and what is the best analysis.
00:29:33
Speaker
from all of our organizations, which goes to your sort of first point about there's stuff flying around and we don't know what it is. Its second mandate was to provide public education and communication, ah sort of a public education, public communication strategy around doing a historical review of the US government's involvement in UFO programs in order to ostensibly either prove or disprove the allegation that there are these historical crash retrieval programs. So I think as a starting point, the the problem was so big that that was ah ah the entry point to start with. I think the challenge now is Eros is dealing with two functions that are not again, not necessarily should be a part of the same mission. So I think their role in centralizing the data makes a whole lot of sense. It's very legitimate from a
00:30:25
Speaker
Homeland Security, you know, national defense perspective, military perspective, great. But if you look at the allegations about this alleged crash retrieval and reverse engineering program. The allegation is that leadership within the DOD, where this arrow office is housed, have been in control of obfuscating and not providing the information, not only to other members of the executive branch, but also Congress. So you can't really have the investigation. You can't have the, you know,
00:30:58
Speaker
The investigators and they investigate the investigators that they are where the problem has been. So there does need to be a bifurcation of the functions that have been donated, denoted to Arrow. I think the other aspect. So one aspect is the problem is so big we need to do something because clearly, even if you don't believe the crash retrievals, the stuff's flying around. So you have to do something. I think that was the entry point. I think the other sort of way that they're thinking about this is from a
00:31:30
Speaker
it's It's similar to the Havana syndrome issue. And I think Havana syndrome is an interesting corollary to the UAP subject. So this is the whole members of the State Department being targeted with microwave weapons. you know And one of the things that's so true about America and and the U.S. is that Regardless of the decisions we make about going to war, we collectively as a country have a lot of respect for our our armed forces and are you know the men and women that serve and protect us both at home and abroad. And I think with the anomalous health incident slash Havana syndrome thing, because
00:32:13
Speaker
victims of this were not getting coverage, right? They were not getting the health care because they incurred these injuries while they were on the job.
Motivations Behind UAP Legislation
00:32:21
Speaker
That has become the story. There is the big 60 minutes coverage of it. There's just the recent hearing where you could see that the senators were connecting at a human level to, you know, effectively their colleagues within public service that they weren't being supported. So I think a large part of the entry point is just we want to support the men and women who are coming to us that we give these high level security clearances to do this stuff. And they're telling us we need to do something about it. I think for a lot of them, it's that interpersonal as a starting point. So it's probably so big. Yeah, we need to start somewhere. And I have respect for these people and the service they provide. I i should take what they're saying seriously. And I think that's the entry point for a lot of them.
00:33:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the problem with this topic in a way that is that the,
00:33:13
Speaker
I mean, that's fine, that's well and good, I suppose, but like the, allegation not allegation, what's the word I want? The hypothesis is on the table. I mean, it's out there, a hypothesis that some of these represent aliens or non-human technology of some kind, which, if true, would be the biggest revelation in the history of the human species. i mean they're just you know In journalism terms, like there is no bigger story. they're just and It is the biggest scoop of all time.
00:33:47
Speaker
and um
00:33:51
Speaker
And yet, like even with the legislators, um and and to some extent also, some of the sort of, um so even with the legislators who have been active on this issue, like Senator Gillibrand, for example, Senator Rubio, um Senator Schumer. Both former presidential candidates, I will add. Yeah, but these are serious. I mean, that's right. These are very serious politicians. Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader, for goodness sake.
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we're we're talking about super serious politicians who are very interested in this issue, which frankly, I don't think anybody thinks they're scoring political points with this. um This is not a popular issue. this you know so So what am I asking? So what you know I already asked you sort of like, what why are they interested? But I guess my what I'm getting to is like,
00:34:45
Speaker
There's this kind of weird silence from the leaders around the potential implications. they don't I don't think they want to talk about aliens, extraterrestrials, non-human technology, um yet I haven't heard any of them rule it out. um How do we as the public, you know if you're the average citizen and you're seeing this activity,
00:35:12
Speaker
Your obvious question is sort of like, well, what's going on? What's behind it? Do they believe that there's non-human intelligence, non-human technology on Earth? Or do they think it's foreign adversaries? Or do they not know? Or do they not care? um it's it's a It's a great question. And if you just read, I really encourage anyone listening to take the time to read the UAP Disclosure Act of 2024. It's 62, 63, 64 pages.
00:35:49
Speaker
And the answer to your question is they clearly believe that the technology non technology of non-human origin exists. And not only does do they is there a belief that it exists, it is there is a belief that it is in the control of private corporations and has been for quite some time. Even if you just read the first couple of pages, the declaration of the the declaration in that legislation effectively alleges that private aerospace corporations were gifted this stuff over the course of history. And this bill is ah ah an attempt to repatriate that material to federal government control because it it also explicitly reemphasizes the government's authority to exercise eminent domain over these materials. So you're not writing a bill
00:36:47
Speaker
in US Congress that includes an eminent domain clause, without real bull which is a very politically toxic yeah ah thing, especially for conservatives, if you don't believe it to be real. So I think there's a belief by at least some cohort yeah that this is clearly a real thing. And they're trying to create a holistic solution because of the level of implications, not only for Americans, but globally. So I think part of the hemming and hawing around not sort of just saying the quiet part out loud is is there is a perception that that would be putting the cart before the horse, right? Like no one wants to be the first one
00:37:34
Speaker
there I think there's a lot of questions like, oh, like if I knew if I was in these classified briefings and this is it, I would want to be the one to say, well, that depends on the nature of the underlying information. The underlying information might not be positive or positive. No, no, that's right. it put It might not be definitive and it might not be positive. Yeah, right. So, you know, just because we know doesn't mean we like again, this is the I mean, and I'm not I'm not making an argument for continued secrecy, but just in trying to put a frame on how members are thinking about it. Right. If the the government is not in the business of
00:38:13
Speaker
talking about things they can't deal with, right, or can't
Implications of UAP Revelations
00:38:16
Speaker
solve for. it So, you know, there's any spectrum of options of like, yes, we've known it's existed for a while, we've had some success, you know, analyzing the science of how these things work. But if we can't defend against it, if you know, quote unquote, defend against it, or if the capabilities are such that what if what if it's the case that the the one of the capabilities of these things is that it is able to effectively travel at speeds that are far greater than let's say our hypersonics currently. That would pretend sort of a technology that would be a threat to the mutually assured destruction
00:39:04
Speaker
policy that has existed since, you know, World War II around stability of international relations. So it just it depends on what is known and what the implications are of what is known that might again create some hesitation. I don't necessarily think that members in Congress actually have the answers to those questions, which is part of the problem. So they are trying to ascertain and get a grounding on those answers and that will then allow them to quote unquote feel more confident about then putting that forward publicly because they'll understand what do we need to do about the implications because like you said
00:39:48
Speaker
If the underlying allegations are true, it's the greatest story ever. It's one of the answers to one of the two to three most fundamental questions that impact the human experience. The implications are so enormous, are so enormous. yes even Even ostensibly, if the phenomenon is ethereal and doesn't really engage with humans at a vast scale, it's still so enormous.
00:40:18
Speaker
religion, economy, technology, society. Understanding of how things work. work yeah so I just think it's an enormous problem, and it's no surprise that, again, politicians who are more worried about reelection than having and building long-term plans about anything, are not wanting to open Pandora's box um if there, again, is substance to the underlying core story.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah, you know, so I wonder if um I almost feel like the the attempt to sort of get at the the the alleged crash recovery program, right, is it's, I mean, it's obviously like it's an interesting question. I wanna know the answer to the question if it's, if if there is a program that was collecting non-human, I mean, obviously I wanna know that of course, but I don't need to know about any historical program to have my mind blown if someone were to say,
00:41:28
Speaker
ah cra you know Essentially, like forget history a minute. um what were what you know What pilots like Ryan Graves and David Freivar are describing? Yeah, we think that we we think they're not human. That alone. You you don't need to know that, you know oh, and there's been a program. you know There's been officials who've known about this for decades. You don't need that component for for the to to me, what the big, really big news would be. um And sometimes I think that... um
00:42:01
Speaker
I think the UFO community sort of, it it can be a little self-defeating sometimes in in focusing too narrowly on sort of whether all these specific allegations are true or not true, you know rather than sort of like keeping your eye on the prize here. The you know the question is, are we alone? and And not are we alone in the universe, because probably not, right? But the question is like, are we alone here on earth or not?
00:42:27
Speaker
Um, that to me is the big question, but uh, I think this is this is so interesting because You know so many there there are a lot of folks who who have been ridiculed or stigmatized or on the subject for so long and there's a there is a desire to seek validation or retribution, right? And I think the Crash Retrieval Program represents that to some extent for some sub portion of folks who have been into this subject for a long period of time. So it's sort of like a proxy for I was right, right? And and being able to then
00:43:04
Speaker
or I've been lied to. You lied to me. Right. Yes. No, no exactly. and And yeah, I think with i I I look in my view, in my view, right. It's kind of putting the cart before the horse a little bit, having the crash retrieval conversation sort of in this moment, because if you have the conversation that, oh, it's real and it represents non-human intelligence,
00:43:31
Speaker
that's gonna open the can of worms that leads to the but a program. so so so so So we don't have to start with the program. um you know We can ultimately get there if if that ends up being for controlled disclosure instead of catastrophic disclosure, the better way to go about it. I'm not really particularly concerned If the truth that if there is a truth that is is exposed and is verifiable, that there is non human intelligence, the crash, that the reverse engineering programs will not last ah once that established truth is understood by a billion plus people. yeah So, you know, at the other side of this is some people make the argument, right? So, Lou Elizondo, the former director of the sort of ATIP program, um has this analogy he sort of always brought up around this, which is, you know,
00:44:25
Speaker
where he's intimating that these crash retrieval programs exist and he sort of says look it's like having bad food in the fridge the longer you leave it in there the the more it stinks and the harder it is to clean up and. Part of the conjecture about.
00:44:41
Speaker
Because again, there's sort of this weird tension between this long history where like clearly this has been a subject even in official government documents that has been studied for quite some time. And it's right. The reality of it has not been a mystery to a variety of organizations within the government for a very long time. So there's a conflict between that and then people going on saying, oh, our pilots are seeing things they can't understand in this like matter of fact way, as if this whole corpus of information of official government documentation that you can just go on NARA or FOIA or the CIA's document room and see. So I think people argue that there's an attempt to kind of like you were suggesting, ignore the history and pretend like none of that ever happened yeah and start the story as if we just started seeing these things in 2004 with the tic-tac case and oh, now we're just starting to think about how to deal with it.
00:45:41
Speaker
And I don't have an opinion one way or another, whether that's a concerted effort or whether that's just how some cohort of people who are not as jacked into every detail, that's just the entry point that they start with because they don't have the perspective. I think regardless,
00:45:57
Speaker
yeah The most important thing is adjudicating the veracity of the claim that these objects represent non-human intelligence or they're not Russian, they're not Chinese, they're not our black budget program. I think that's the first question. We know it's the phenomena, quote unquote, is a is a real, tangible thing that is apparently being captured regularly. So it's just a matter of now having a conversation about what does the data say about those encounters in a way that is repeatable and verifiable to some level of scientific rigor? And then I think everything else kind of comes out in the wash with that as a as a baseline. But again, you know, I think there's a perception that ah if we say that it's non-human,
00:46:50
Speaker
the million We're not ready for the one million and one follow-up questions, which is gonna be like, how do you know? Show us, let us see it. How long have you known? How many people have known? have the And then it's you know the litigation and the injuries and the the the the the the potential legal liability around this, I think is probably a big part of why people are very hesitant to start the conversation.
00:47:13
Speaker
Interesting. um so weird you know So right now, as we speak, the UAP Disclosure Act of 2024 is either dead or like maybe not dead. I think as the latest, rub I don't know. I've been sort of trying to follow this on Twitter you know in between ah the day job. But um uncertain it's fate seems to be uncertain. um what What are you looking to next? like what do you see you know where Where's your mind going now?
00:47:41
Speaker
So in in terms of, sorry, I didn't put that very well, but what do you see as sort of the next path of progress on this issue? So as a practical matter, it's it's it's always funny talking about legislation because it it it becomes so obvious how few Americans actually understand how a bill becomes a law generally. yeah um and And even though there's a cartoon about it, it's it's actually really unfortunate. But um just as a practical matter, the the technically speaking, the UAPDA is not quote unquote dead without getting too wonkish. um Every year there's a big
00:48:21
Speaker
ah appropriations bill for the military called the National Defense Authorization Act. It's usually signed in December by the President. It's negotiated between the two chambers of Congress, the House and the Senate. They're about to go into negotiation over their reconciled version of this National Defense Authorization Act after the election.
00:48:40
Speaker
procedurally this year because of timing reasons, they're going into an informal reconciliation process, which means in theory, any bill that hasn't already made it into the House's version or the Senate's version of it can sort of be airdropped ah into a final version, sort of just being brought up, you know, and then just inserted arbitrarily ah without having, again, received a full vote by the House or a full vote by the Senate.
00:49:08
Speaker
It's it happens. It's not unusual for stuff to get air dropped into an NDAA during negotiation. Given the scope of what the UAPDA is trying to accomplish. um You know, it's basically creating a new governmental agency with subpoena power and complete access to the black programs by way of the executive. It is, in my personal view,
00:49:35
Speaker
as of today, ah unlikely to be airdropped. yeah That can change based on the hearing that's coming up in the House in November and some you know some conversations that members of the House and the Senate that are supportive of the UAPDA are both trying to to push for. um but i So procedurally, technically speaking,
00:49:56
Speaker
It's possible. It's not probable from of the political calculus and capital and all that perspective. So looking beyond the UAPDA, One of the ways I've always described how philosophically we think about the space is that there it's a disclosure and discovery
Future Strategies for UAP Legislation
00:50:15
Speaker
paradigm. And this, I think, was originally coined by ah ah former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who ah is the founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, which is looking at this purely from the aviation safety angle and trying to support both military and civil civilian pilots. And all I mean by the disclosure discovery paradigm is
00:50:34
Speaker
you know, a lot of people are like, the government's never never going to tell us anything, we have to just do science and research. And then another core of people is like, science and research is BS, and they're just trying to sell stuff for big pharma and whatever. So hey it's not a great, we're in an unfortunate time where there's a lack of trust in institutions, both scientifically and in the government, which are the two big ones we need to move this conversation forward. But as an example of this the the virtuous cycle that they both create, if you have research programs that are producing verifiable, repeatable evidence that there is anomalous things going on, that creates an environment where the political capital necessary to pass legislation is lower, how helping to create the scientific basis for this legislation to be passed. So it helps increase the possibility for
00:51:20
Speaker
new legislation to be passed because the scientific reality is more defined. The same goes in the opposite direction. As Congress or the government more generally declassifies more documentation, provides more reality to the substance, provides data sets that scientific the scientific community can now access and utilize to do analysis, which, for example, has happened with the Galileo Project and ah Dr. Avilobet Harvard Dr. Avi Loeb at Harvard when he went to do his expedition to track down. I am one the first interstellar object that we've been able to track that crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Papua New Guinea. He got a
00:52:03
Speaker
you know the Defense Department to validate their tracking data for where it landed so that you could go and find it. So as you have government providing, because they have amazing tools and assets that are gathering all this data, providing that more so to the public, that can then increase decrease the stigma in science to then increase the amount of funding and people willing to do research towards it. So so that with that as a baseline, right it's both things. It's not either or.
00:52:31
Speaker
I think you're going to see probably the atomization of the UAPDA. So the UAPDA creates a nine member review board, it has subpoena power, it has whistleblower protections, eminent domain, it defines UAP specifically, it has all these declarations. What you'll likely see is an attempt to break that down into three, four, or five different component parts. I, for example, know and we're working with ah a new disclosure advocacy group, which is made up of attorneys from all across the US that have worked on previous legislation around this subject that, you know, we're basically going to have that process play out in public. So I think a lot of the challenge has been historically, all this legislation has been
00:53:10
Speaker
back room closed door stuff and then it just appears out of nowhere with no context. We're going to try to facilitate public conversations around, again, the atomization of some of these pieces and then ah trying to introduce those individually. So that's, I think, sort of one angle. The other angle One of many, so that's one angle. Another angle is obviously if either of the new presidential candidates, once they go in office, it's now an issue that we've seen at least former President Trump speak to. ah Vice President Kamala Harris has intimated her interest in some of these esoteric concepts, but not directly, but sort of intimated interest. And there's a whole bunch of conjecture about
00:53:50
Speaker
how the democratic national security leadership around Biden basically didn't want to let this conversation go forward because of his reelection prospects. But Kamala is a very different person in very different age brackets. Excuse me, Vice President Harris. So who knows what that looks like? um So there's always the presidential angle because they have the authority to do this you know somewhat somewhat unilaterally. There's some nuance there. um Pushing for legislation that increases ah public funding for UAP programs is another huge piece. So everyone talks about, oh, we need more science. We need more research. We don't need the government. That's great. Wonderful. I totally agree with that. Who's paying for it?
00:54:29
Speaker
Are you paying for it? I'm not paying for it. These programs cost a lot of money. It's not cheap. I mean, these types of equipment. things So that's another huge angle is and there's already is some sort of and NIH funding that's going to this, but that's big. It can get turned on quite a bit higher.
00:54:45
Speaker
And then just generally, there just needs to be continued effort in educating existing and what will be new members in the 119th Congress about the reality of the subject that we understand, but it's still not universally understood across all 500 somewhat in the House and 100 in the Senate. um So as as we do go into the next congressional cycle, leadership within whoever is the majority in either house and the leadership on these committees are all potentially up for grabs. So what has historically been preventing hearings in the House Oversight Committee, for example, has been Chairman Comer's obsession with only talking about the Biden crime family effectively the entirety of the last two years. um There was plenty of opportunity to have several hearings about this subject
00:55:38
Speaker
And we just it wasn't politically advantageous. So legislation, research funding, hearings, I think all of these things are continuing to percolate. And I will just mention having just been in DC talking to 12 offices, both in the House and Senate two weeks ago, um there is a very serious focus and attention that's going to this issue that is not um not being bogged down by, you know, just because the UAPA didn't pass or is potentially not passing the cycle, it has zero consequence on the perception of importance of this issue to many members of Congress. Yeah, and I actually was going to ask you this earlier. ah You've already essentially answered it, but like,
00:56:29
Speaker
So there is real interest by people within, I mean, not not just the the the legislators that we've sort of named, but like their staff, you know the people who make things run. So you see real people care about this and and know about it. i i'll give i'll give ah I'll give a tangible example. Number one, yes. And and again, I think there is a, if you if you don't and if you're not engaged in the sort of
00:56:59
Speaker
the industry of politics on a regular basis, it's hard to kind of understand the levels of nuance. So number one, like the government's not ah not a monolith, right? Like it's not, there's not one deep state, right? There is bureaucratic entities all over the place with a variety of conflicting goals and incentives and desires. One of the things that was so fascinating is that particularly amongst staffers who, you know, generally speaking are going to be more in the weeds on any,
00:57:26
Speaker
particular you know vein. you know The staffers we generally communicate and talk with are national security staffers, foreign policy staffers, because they end up getting the UAP portfolio.
00:57:37
Speaker
um they all they all have to have awareness of the subject because it's kind of there is tangible legislation and things and reports happening on a regular basis and they're getting asked their the members they represent are getting asked about this stuff all of the time so there is a necessity for them to actually have be abreast on what's going on but what we were expecting more so when we went there was sort of like a yeah i've i saw arrows historical report i've read a couple of one or two headlines that no materials of extraterrestrial origin exist. And that would be the extent of their curiosity and their understanding. um one One particular story I'll generally characterize is there was a ah staffer who was an ODNI fellow ah and ah Office of the Director of National Intelligence. So they sit atop all of the intelligence agencies and sort of correlate and and aggregate everything and sort of make a collective decision. This was
00:58:33
Speaker
born out of the intelligence failure post 9-11 and the lack of communication because of stovepiping. And so they will do these things where if you can be working in ODNI and then you can get assigned to but ah a member of Congress as a fellow, so you get to sort of work in that staff role for some period of time, but then you ultimately return back to your original agency, in this case, ODNI. And what was so interesting about that conversation was This person had heard about the UAP stuff from ODNI because they're the ones who do these annual reports about these UAP sightings and UAPTF, I believe it was the UAP task force, was run out of ODNI at the time. so yeah Their perspective was like, oh yeah, I mean, this is it was not a
00:59:22
Speaker
Oh, it's a bunch of religious nuts talking about paranormal stuff. It was not a, oh, this is circular reporting from a small cadre of people that, you know, are disconnected from the rest of the, you know, operating establishment. It was very much like a yes. Oh, yeah, like I've been hearing about this in my own conversations, even though my function has nothing to do with UAP.
00:59:45
Speaker
seems like you know we're trying to figure out what's going on. Part of the reason they wanted to meet with us was kind of get a download on what is the latest understanding from the public and private sector outside for him to better understand like where to look and how to understand the issue and And again, like the reality of it is not up for question in terms of there's something anomalous that we have data for. right and and so And they don't question the, like they they know the tools, they know the capabilities.
01:00:17
Speaker
and so it it's all it's there. And, you know, as we sort of heard from a recent whistleblower that came out from the National Geospatial Agency, they have these classified message boards and and file sharing rooms, where folks are looking at this media on a regular basis. So it it's it's not really
01:00:41
Speaker
it's accessible. And so because of that, and a lot of these staffers will go to the briefings with the intelligence community inspector general or these arrow briefings that are classified. So they have a much more they have much more to sink their teeth and into to ground them in the, oh yeah, like this is a thing. Regardless of whether they ascribe an origin to it, it's more like just looking at the performance envelopes and the capabilities. That's a concern, you know,
Challenges in Media and Scientific Engagement
01:01:08
Speaker
regardless. And so I i do think that there's a real disconnect between who the public thinks is into the issue,
01:01:18
Speaker
from members, which is that it's true. Those members are into it. And you know, the likes of the house UAP caucus and folks who've done legislation like the Rubio's and the Jilla Brands and the Schumer's, but they're not the only ones. And I think the ah silence from people, I think folks should take that as more of a, I don't know what to do about this. And so I'm just not going to say anything about it versus And I don't believe or not believe or anything. yeah That's obviously not true for everybody. But I think it is it is a much greater population of members of both the House and the Senate that have an awareness that there is a there there ah than is being signaled by the folks who just happen to be loud about it ah in the media.
01:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, and and I want to wrap up. We're just at five now, but um if I can ask you just a little bit more. OK, great. um Yeah, no, what you just said, I mean, that this sort of probably brings us to a good place to close, but I mean, there is a there there. And it seems to me that I'm not saying anything brilliant or original, but um It seems to me that part of the problem potentially here is that what that that what that is, what the answer is or answers are, because I'm not convinced there's one answer.
01:02:46
Speaker
um
01:02:50
Speaker
just might be really effing weird. And it might be weirder than kind of anybody is ready for. And even even the you know the alleged sort of you know conspirators who've been covering this up for decades or whatever, like it's not clear that they would know exactly what's going on, which is is kind of maddening, but I suspect that I suspect that part of the abysmal failure of the media to cover this and part of the other side of that coin I think is the kind of um
01:03:29
Speaker
real like hostility that much of the scientific community has towards this issue. Not everybody, but there's a real bitter hostility there. I mean, a desire to just shut down the conversation. um you know it It isn't because it can't be, is sort of what you hear from, I think the majority still of the scientific community.
01:03:51
Speaker
um And I think a lot of,
01:03:58
Speaker
I think that that those resistances come from ah ah maybe a very human kind of reluctance to engage with something that is just super weird, that is just beyond anything we we know. So I don't know. I guess that was a bit of a speech. But I want to know. Well, I want a segue to ask you, like do you have an opinion about what's actually going on?
01:04:25
Speaker
It's okay if you don't. I think it's reasonable to just say, I don't know, but. There's so many good things that you just brought up. I could literally spend a whole hour just talking about and any of them. um I'll come to what my thoughts are in a second. I just briefly want to want to touch on this note that um like the weirdness Part of the challenge is it it it seems to be so outside of the conventional box that we're normally used to seeing or operating in that there's no good place to start, right? To to incorporate it into our worldview. to One of the things that some ah folks have been talking about is like, if you look at how in the West we structure our worldview versus it as either Eastern cultures or indigenous cultures,
01:05:16
Speaker
Indigenous cultures potentially have a much easier time incorporating the phenomenon into their worldview just because they're less materialist and they allow for you know the integration of of real and and and spiritual and it's less of a ah above and below and it's more of a mix. So so I think there's there's a whole conversation to be had about like, how our priors impact our ability to potentially interpret what this phenomena is. yeah um So I think there's something there. So that's one piece. I come from a science family. I mean, my both my parents work in pharma. My dad is stage one drug discovery. My mom works in clinical trials. my
01:06:01
Speaker
Um, yeah, i my dad is an entomologist. I so I also come. Yeah. So, you know, ah so I mean, I literally growing up, we'd have a massive bookshelf of every nature magazine, because my dad would be published occasionally. And I, you know, so go i yeah, and i add it but like, that kind of mindset is very much at home for me in terms of evidence based, and you want to sort of have a methodical process, all that kind of stuff.
01:06:24
Speaker
I think there is a huge, I think science generally right now, so capital S science as an industry, especially post COVID, unfortunately is having an identity crisis in that. And this is um ah probably a combination of both science and let's sort of say like academia or elite institutions as well. I i went to Princeton. So like, I also have the sort of I get this all the time of like, oh, you mean Mr. Ivy League? Oh, okay. Like there's there is a real animosity towards sort of Ivy League, academics, science as being disconnected from reality as proselytizing and just condescending down to the rest of the people as opposed to bringing folks along for the ride. And I actually think that this is a real crisis.
01:07:11
Speaker
The peer review process and the way in which modern science and research funding and grants works today is, needs to change. And you could talk to anybody who's in this space and it's sort of like, they all understand that, but they're like, we can only have that conversation internally. We can't have that conversation externally because then that threatens our pedestal of of of of expertise as who people should look to. And and because it, right, right. you if If you're a scientist, you you don't want the standing of science and scientists to be eroded or undermined. um So you keep some of those those debates within the
Philosophical and Theoretical Considerations
01:07:51
Speaker
community. Yeah.
01:07:52
Speaker
So I'm gonna say there's a difference between being scientific and scientistic and the idea is like we're only focused on being scientistic now, which is like the patina, the veneer of of process and bureaucracy. Whereas like when we grew up, like the whole idea of science was that anyone can do it and it's it's experiential and you you you just go like, what you know, use what the tools you have around you, it wasn't so gate kept for lack of a better term. So I think there's like a real issue there that's a larger issue um that then makes it impossible for us to
01:08:24
Speaker
take that infrastructure that that works well in some ways and apply it to more non mainstream or as a tech topics. I mean, we've spent how many billions of dollars on string theory with no ability to experimentally verify verify or validate any of it. So what makes that at all, but it's really good at making predictions. ah you know So I think there's a whole bunch of issues there and that makes it challenging. So this being weird doesn't fit into the ability for government to deal with it effectively, or the existing scientific infrastructure to deal with it, ah sort of correctly, which, you know, um leaves possibly religious institutions as a, as a leader in this, which, again, people will have a lot of concern about that for any number of reasons. Well, also, also unable to deal with the weirdness is the media.
01:09:14
Speaker
Yes, no but I mean with a few rare exceptions that that's a lot of what I think is is I mean the yeah but lack of coverage of this is shocking. I mean, again, you know, the just the potential, you know, like.
01:09:29
Speaker
the The fact that extraterrestrial origins haven't been ruled out after these this many reports is is a screaming headline itself, yeah but it's not a headline anybody runs because I think because of a deep uncomfortableness with wading into territory that is is unusual and that is very different and challenges, as you said, challenges some of our ah our fundamental sort of understanding of of what's going on, what kind of world we live in. ah The last note on this and then I'll i'll go to my perspective is is it's also like authority and control and sovereignty and like all these other like philosophical questions like okay great so there's you know humans or humanity is not the dominant intelligent species on earth
01:10:22
Speaker
So are we in control the way we are told that we are in control or are we being controlled? Does that cause a sort of breakdown in belief in criminal justice and the rule of law and the international order? and you know Does that mean that nations are irrelevant? Do they still have a function? If you know we are sharing the planet with an ostensibly much more advanced, powerful, potentially from our perspective, what appears to be omniscient or omnipresent type of phenomenon. It's complicated. and And so people don't want people don't want to have those conversations, right? They much rather, okay, back to you, Wendy, and, you know, go home and take care of the kids. Yeah, or, or like, this is kind of the other, you know, the there's a certain irony in this, but, you know, or they say,
01:11:15
Speaker
well the Or they make the label for the weird. They say it's aliens. And then they sort of refute that. They go, well, the universe is too you know big. The galaxy is too big. The distances between stars are too vast. And and they sort of put it into a box that, you know interestingly, like the UFO community is is has kind of evolved to where I think UFO people are like, nah, I don't know if it's aliens. I didn't say that. you know but But by putting the alien label on it, that they then shut it down with these kind of old conventional arguments.
01:11:47
Speaker
I think this is actually such a really good point, which is that you know if you look at the quote unquote UFO community or you ah you researchers who've been looking at this subject for a long period of time, the the extraterrestrial hypothesis actually decreases in probability from their viewpoints as they look into more deeply. Obviously, famously ah Jacques Vallée is sort of Control system, you know idea you have Mac Tony's crypto terrestrials concept I mean there's a whole and we actually at UAP caucus we have ah we replicated
01:12:26
Speaker
the origin classification system that was presented by Colonel Carl Nell at the Seoul Foundation conference last year, which it it basically tries to provide a like a framework for all of the possibilities of origin for UAP, including prosaic, which could be like, you know, military weather phenomena celestial, it it includes sort of the um ah the ah wide variety of ah interdimensional, extraterrestrial, ultra-terrestrial concepts. And then it also includes things like the spiritual side, jinn and, you know, these sort of fallen angels and a lot of, so all of these things, right?
01:13:05
Speaker
there's sort of weird overlaps. and And so I think like you were saying earlier, it's not clear to me that when we say UAP or UFOs, that it's actually a singular thing. You know, it is almost certainly multiple things. And like, again, when I when i say the term UAP, unidentified anomalous phenomenon, i it's I use it as a very specific term of art, which does not include things like technologies of and ah ah ah ah temporarily not attributed objects, which was a term of art defined in the way PDA is like things that might be drones or black budget programs that we initially identify as that. Right. Right. We're talking about what we're talking about the the truly anomalous one million percent. Yeah. What does it mean? You know, I think my I
01:13:56
Speaker
to me if you To me, it seems to be the case, I think it might've been Whitley Strieber who used this this phraseology, um a precognitive sentient phenomenon. That's what we experience out of this. So it's a precognitive meaning, it seems to experience time or have an ability to manipulate or or navigate time in a way that is,
01:14:21
Speaker
not in the linear way that we experience it as humans. yeah um So what that would manifest and look like to us would almost feel like, oh, they they're able to take action before we even think. But it and so that's where the precog comes from. And it's not necessarily that they They just might, again, navigate and engage with time a little bit differently.
Debate on UAP Technology and Intelligence
01:14:45
Speaker
Sentient in that it's it's not just a physics, it's not just it's not gravity, it's not a fundamental force. it It has some kind of consciousness. Consciousness, yeah. That that is that is independent of
01:15:04
Speaker
our own individual consciousness as human beings, but in some ways seems to be able to directly interface um with our own individual and or collective consciousnesses, consciousness, I don't know what the consciousness is. So so and then and then phenomena in that it's not clear to me if it's ah beings,
01:15:31
Speaker
if it's a consciousness that is generating manifesting physical craft or beings or craft and beings, if it is a amalgam or combination of artificial and biological and as well, some people make this conscious that the crafts seem to have like a skin on the outside and they almost appear to be breathing or that the the pilots and the craft are Interconnected you know intimately and they're actually one in the same and that's why we can't replicate their flying ability because the pilot is a part and node of quote unquote the craft so
01:16:12
Speaker
The most loose term I think that I feel like some sort of like precognitive sentient phenomenon seems right to me, because that sort of deals with all of the six observables and then all of this sort of oral and documentary history of how people have and have engaged with it. i'm I'm inclined, and I know Dr. Eric Weinstein has sort of poo-pooed this because it has no scientific basis in terms of like having an and an anchor.
01:16:38
Speaker
This idea of like interdimensionality, I always find super interesting. um What does that mean in practice from a scientific perspective look that's above my pay grade, right, but there there does seem to like whether it's this space time metric engineering that Dr. Hal Putoff talks about where someone has figured out a way effectively to Engineer the space around a craft such that it can move through this through space time as a matter of time that's right as opposed to you know moving through space overtime.
01:17:12
Speaker
um that seems to me to sort of, I can wrap my head around that. yeah um And what that would mean is they they could sort of always be existing, but just only sometimes be visible when they turn off that that motion thing or whatever the the the the whatever the function is. so And again, this is all super highly speculative. i i also i hope like And this is on again on the super anomalous side. I also think even if it's none of those things,
01:17:43
Speaker
And it's simply that the US government has made a break ah either a propulsion breakthrough or an engineering breakthrough that results in, for example, space-time metric engineering. here's Here's my view of that use case.
01:17:59
Speaker
We have always had, in the US specifically, we so we've always had a social contract around how we spend money for a military, and then some of those advancements so then get seeded into the civilian world as as the as the social contract. So GPS, all of the stuff we got out of the spatial program, microwaves, fiber optics, LEDs, lasers, all that stuff.
01:18:20
Speaker
It always gets passed on to the consumer um and not doesn't necessarily take 50 years. It's usually in the relatively let's say 10 year 15 year we start to see the derivative technologies get seeded into civilian culture. I think with the UAP issue one of the arguments I've made is even if you believe that it's not non-human intelligence. What seems to have broken down is the social contract that these breakthrough advancements ultimately get shared as a part of the civilian technology infrastructure. And what it appears to be the case is whatever this UAP UFO tech is, clearly based on the documentaries has been either discovered
01:19:00
Speaker
or invented for a while for the greater part of 70, 80 years at this point and has he yet as yet to be ceded into
Conclusion and Importance of UAP Issues
01:19:09
Speaker
the civilian world. So that is a problem because that's a breakdown of that inherent social contract around public funds going to military spending without us being able to have the civilian benefits. And again, but regardless of this, why I'm always like, regardless of origin, like it's still an interesting thing that is a problem.
01:19:28
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, it's it's sort of silly to say, I mean, if we're talking about, you know, you take like the Nimitz and Princeton incident, you know, things dropping from space to the water in the seconds and um Yeah, it's sort of like, well, if that is, even if that's just secret human technology, if we're messing with gravity or something, like that's, that's not just kind of a, what do you call it? Like a sequential step in technology? know Correct. just Correct. not Like, Oh, it's a faster jet. It's like, Oh, no, that would, that would have its own radical implications for humanity. So, you know, I think you're, you're, I think this is a really good point. You're 100% right in that if you make the argument that the tech tack was black budget US tech, and that we've basically solved the manipulating the manipulation of gravity, you know, in the fifties,
01:20:21
Speaker
That has massive implications for humanity. like like like right right like like So even if it's just that, I think there's a real conversation about, look, we just saw, I was just in North Carolina ah with family ah in Boone in the mountains when Hurricane Helene hit. my boy we we We got so lucky that we just happened to be on the right side of the mountain.
01:20:45
Speaker
yeah Now, without we got out, had we been on the other side of the mountain, I mean, total, total sh it show. So climate, regardless of whether you believe it's human climate, and whether it's human initiated or whatever, if we have, again,
01:21:02
Speaker
and yeah gravity management, we need to see that into the civilian world immediately, it even if just to deal with that climate issue. um So again, there there are so many ways to kind of approach this subject. I think the thing I always try to make sure that is clear for listeners is that regardless of what your priors are about what you think the origin is, this is something that needs to be dealt with and addressed. Again, for any number of reasons that you can make up.
01:21:31
Speaker
Yeah, and and and I think the media, and and and that's why I'm a journalist, so i I feel in my happy place criticizing media, but like you know that's where the media has just totally fallen down, which is like, there's a mystery that needs answering, whatever the answer is. Lester, I've kept you long. let's ah I really appreciate your time and the conversation. Absolutely, absolutely. Thanks so much, Isaiah.
01:21:57
Speaker
Oh, thank you. And I look forward to following your work and keep it in communication. The journey continues. The journey continues indeed. All right. Take care. Have a good one.