December 16, 2024 - 12:00pm
The great American panic over unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) continues. Originally centred on New Jersey, reports of strange lights in the sky — mostly assumed to be drones — have spread to other parts of the United States, including Texas and Florida.
As Tom Rogan explains for UnHerd, these craft are almost certainly of terrestrial origin, but by playing down public concerns the US authorities haven’t done the best job of calming the nation. Nor has the President-elect, Donald Trump. Referring to what he calls the “mystery drones” — his advice is to “shoot them down”.
There is a danger of this story spiralling out of control. Take, for instance, the widely-shared image of a glowing ball of light. This one really does look extraterrestrial, which, indeed, it is — because, as Liv Boeree points out, it’s just an out-of-focus shot of a star or planet.
But before the misinformation bores show up to blame the whole thing on social media, it’s worth recalling that all this has happened before. I’m not talking about the UFO crazes that started in 1947 and have continued ever since, but the phantom airship sightings of the late 1890s. This was huge news at the time, but is largely forgotten today.
It all began on 17 November 1896, when the citizens of Sacramento, California saw a bright light and a shadowy shape moving across the darkened sky. Some witnesses reported hearing voices coming from above — presumed to be the pilots of the mysterious craft. What followed was a wave of similar tales spreading from the West Coast all the way inland to Chicago. These continued for months, each breathless report feeding the next.
The parallels to the current phenomenon are intriguing. Then, as now, there were loud condemnations of “yellow journalism” and public gullibility. Many of the sightings were assumed to be (and probably were) ignorant misidentifications or deliberate hoaxes. In a minority of incidents, there were wild claims of alien involvement. That said, the main focus of the panic was on a technology that actually existed.
The first manned hot air balloon rose from the ground in 1783. The first powered airship to stay successfully aloft did so in 1852. It wasn’t until the First World War that airships were used to bomb civilian populations, but the panic of 1896 — no matter how inaccurate in its specifics — was clearly prophetic. The American public were right to look up and shudder.
They can be forgiven for doing the same today. In the early 20th century, Germany became dominant in airship technology. Today, China is becoming dominant in drone technology. America’s greatest rival is already intimidating the West with displays of its prowess in this field.
Though often associated with targeted attacks, drones also have the potential to be used as a weapon of mass destruction: imagine a swarm of thousands of cheap, disposable devices — each one equipped with an incendiary charge. Now factor in the application of artificial intelligence and how that might be used to take out an entire city — or target a specified group of people for elimination.
As Americans watch the skies again tonight, there are those claiming that their government is testing out a top-secret drone-based weapon. On this occasion, I hope the conspiracy theorists are right.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeMore and more people will look to the skies now and see more drones in more states. Its just mass hysteria about nothing.
Something similar happened worldwide in the 1950s when people were seeing flying saucers hovering overhead every night. Nuts.
I’ve observed over many years that most UFOs etc turn out be pigs.
I think they may well be right. Something is going on and for the government to claim it has no idea is absurd.
I, for one, can believe that the government has no idea what is going on. It’s not like the government operates with perceptive genius. Quite the opposite.
But unidentified flying objects have long been a thing. I won’t worry about them unless they start doing something bad, which they never do.
It is not absurd if the federal Government doesn’t know and it doesn’t seem to.
This isn’t 1896. We have the capability of determining what these things are.
The most like explanation is that it’s from our own government and that they’re just f*****g with us.
Edit. We’re all adults here… is the instant asterisking of fcuking really necessary? It’s the 21st century, no one’s gonna catch the vapours.
If the drones belonged to the Ruskies, Chicoms or Mullahs, the military would’ve take them down in a New York minute — in a New Jersey minute, even. The government’s bafflement is utterly preposterous; they’re telling big stripey lies. They know exactly what the drones are and what they’re up to because they’re the military’s own drones — likely the highly advanced PteroDynamics X-P4 Transwing VTOL UAS type which are capable of the extraordinary flight characteristics being observed. According to research by investigative journalist and podcaster Daniel Liszt (aka Dark Journalist), they’re being deployed under a Continuity of Government (COG) associated program called Homeland Synchroniser, the purpose of which is to test public response to a threatening mysterious airborne invasion. [Did I just hear someone whisper “You mean like an invasion of extra-terrestrials in UFOs faked by the Deep State’s so-called Secret Space Program?”] It’s blatantly obvious this drone flap is just one big Military-Intelligence-Industrial Complex trial balloon psyop. Check out Daniel’s latest reports on X or YT for the full story.
Also Chase Hughes does an excellent analysis on you tube.
That’s the most likely scenario.
I’m not saying you’re not right, but I’m old enough to remember when a Chinese spy balloon transversed the entire USA and our government did jack about it.
I don’t get the panic. Annoyance, I could understand, but not concern.
“imagine a swarm of thousands of cheap, disposable devices — each one equipped with an incendiary charge. Now factor in the application of artificial intelligence….” There is an excellent short film on Youtube named ‘Slaughterbots’, on the Dust channel, which explores this very eventuality. Well worth watching.
It’s absurd that the government seems unaware… OK, whatever! But here’s my two cents on a conspiracy: if lockdowns were the tool a few years ago, now they’re deploying drones that could prevent you from leaving your house without permission. If COVID was a test drive for controlling the mind, this feels like a test drive for controlling the body! You are welcome! LOLOL
One always assumes that the USA has the best scientists and the brightest academics. Unfortunately most of them were immigrants from Europe or Asia. There is bound to be some innocent explanation for these occurrences but present day Americans are too thick to properly investigate these phenomena.
I’m more worried about the origins being from this planet than from elsewhere in the universe. The capacity humans have for developing means of destroying others far outstrips the evolutionary requirements needed for controlling technology to use it for the benefit of mankind. First thing that happens when in general use is finding ways to weaponise it. Bob Dylan was spot on back in the day.