worldpoliticsreview | A potentially world-changing revelation was made last week. I am not referring to the reported breakthrough in fabricating room-temperature superconductors, though that claim would be Nobel Prize-worthy if it overcomes the widespread skepticism with which it was greeted. Instead, I’m talking about the congressional hearings last Wednesday that suggested the U.S. government possesses what used to be commonly referred to as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, but are now officially known as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs.
Former U.S. intelligence official David Grusch as well as naval pilots Ryan Graves and David Fravor all testified to that effect before a House Oversight subcommittee last Wednesday. Their testimony came on the heels of Grusch’s claim last month that multiple government agencies are operating programs aimed at recovering and analyzing UAPs, without any congressional oversight. But last week on Capitol Hill, Grusch went even further, maintaining that some of the UAPs the government has recovered contained “non-human” biological material.
The three men’s testimony is the latest twist in a story that has long trailed the Pentagon as a conspiracy theory, but took on a more serious veneer with the release by the U.S. government in 2019, 2020 and 2021 of footage and documentation of UAPs that it had gathered over recent years. Those releases followed the revelation in 2017 that the Pentagon had been operating the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program—a pet project of former Sen. Harry Reid—since 2007, to investigate claims of UAPs. But while there have been other recent congressional hearings on UAPs, they did not include forceful claims of recovered crafts of extraterrestrial origin.
As with the claims about the breakthrough on superconductors, skepticism seems warranted. The objects in question might be truly “unidentified,” and therefore worth investigating. But Grusch’s claims that they are of extraterrestrial origin or contained the remains of extraterrestrial life forms is for now dubious. As Jordan Bimm, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, remarked, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And for now, extraordinary evidence—or any evidence, for that matter—is not forthcoming.
Perhaps the best argument against the UAPs being or containing ETs is what one might call “the Trump Test”: Since former President Donald Trump would have in all likelihood asked about it during his time in office, surely he would have revealed that the U.S. had proof of their existence if he had been told so, given his penchant for mishandling secrets and his disdain for “deep state” bureaucrats. Since he didn’t, the logic goes, the U.S. must not have such proof. While it’s possible that Trump was not told the truth for this very reason, the possibility of a large bureaucracy keeping such a secret hidden for so long is yet another reason for skepticism.
But for the sake of argument, let us suspend disbelief. What if it is eventually confirmed that intelligent, extraterrestrial life forms have visited Earth and continue to do so? Such a revelation would be important and jarring in many ways, but the impact on international politics could end up being the most profound. Three key implications are particularly worth noting.
First, this would be a “reality-compromising event” that could dramatically alter how citizens view and interact with their own governments. As the political scientists Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall argued, confirmation of extraterrestrial UAPs regularly visiting earth could raise doubts about the competency of national governments to protect their citizens, and even the need for governments to do so. Stated simply, if the aliens are seen as clearly superior to humans, their sovereignty might be preferred to our own governments.
It is commonly assumed that a hostile alien invasion will cause humankind to set aside its many divisions and make common cause to fight it off. But that is far from certain.
This feeds what Wendt calls the “UFO taboo,” whereby the U.S. government essentially ignores UFOs or, more accurately, refuses to seriously entertain the possibility of alien UFOs, at least publicly. For example, while the government does acknowledge the existence of UAPs, it is quick to deny claims, such as those made by Grusch under oath, that they are extraterrestrial.
Second and related, confirmation of intelligent, extraterrestrial life could alter how nation-states interact with one another. The possibility of aliens arriving on Earth is often seen as threatening. Indeed, the above-mentioned Pentagon program was started because UAPs were seen as a security risk. And as Rep. Andy Ogles remarked during last week’s hearing, “There clearly is a threat to the national security of the United States of America. As members of Congress, we have a responsibility to maintain oversight and be aware of these activities so that if appropriate we take action.”
It is commonly assumed that whatever action we take to respond to such a threat will be a cooperative global endeavor. After all, one of the most common tropes in science fiction plots is that a hostile alien invasion will cause humankind to set aside its many divisions and make common cause to fight it off. But that is far from certain. As the failure to coordinate global responses to the climate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic have shown, cooperation is far from a universal response to a global crisis. Some nations might work together to counter the alien threat. But some could seek to protect themselves by going it alone, while others might even align with the aliens if the latter adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy.
Even if extraterrestrials are not directly or immediately threatening, the revelation of their existence could still pull nations apart, rather than bring humanity together. It is possible that the desire to communicate with an alien civilization could spur the same cooperative spirit on display in the International Space Station, but on a grander scale. But it is also possible, and perhaps even likely, that governments will see it as another arena for competition and invoke nationalism to spur efforts to be the first to make contact, much like the space race during the 1950s and 1960s.
Third, the arrival of intelligent extraterrestrial life would point to one hopeful outcome for the future of humans: We may not completely destroy ourselves.
To understand why this is the case, consider Fermi’s Paradox, named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi. The idea is captured in the simple question Fermi apparently voiced at lunch one day with his colleagues at Los Alamos: “Where are they?” But the simplicity of Fermi’s question masks a profound idea. Given the vastness of space, there must be extraterrestrials somewhere. And since some of these extraterrestrials would, like humans, want to explore space, they should have found us by now. Why haven’t they? Numerous answers have been offered, but a common one portends an ominous future for humanity: extinction.
Specifically, if alien civilizations much older and more advanced than humans on Earth have not yet found us, then they must have destroyed themselves before they could master interstellar space travel. If so, what happened to those aliens could happen to humans. As University of Manchester physicist Brian Cox opined this past week, “Maybe just ‘getting along’ as a global civilization is harder than science.”
But if, to the contrary, aliens have already visited us, then there’s still hope for us. Fermi’s paradox would be solved, but in a way that suggests humanity is not destined for self-destruction.
At the end of the day, all of these speculations are the result of a thought experiment. We still lack credible evidence that the UAPs discussed on Capitol Hill last week are from another world. This is not to say that investigations of UAPs should be discontinued. Even if not alien in origin, they are still in need of explanation. But that should not distract humanity from focusing on the many problems we already face here on Earth, of clearer origin and nature.
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