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GOVERNMENT MINDSET AND OUR FUTURE AMONG THE STARS

Nick Pope

Every story needs a villain. When it comes to the story of UFOs, the role of that villain is usually taken by the government. In this story, the government is sometimes seen as a single, monolithic entity, while other times, there’s the suggestion that some sort of cabal exists within government, managing UFO secrets. In either case, a central belief among many in the UFO community is that a conspiracy exists to cover up the truth about an extraterrestrial presence. I have a somewhat different perspective on all this. I served for twenty-one years as a civilian employee of the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), and in the 1990s I was assigned to a division where my duties included researching and investigating the UFO phenomenon. In this chapter I’m going to use my previous experience to give readers an insight into why and how governments investigate UFOs, and the sorts of conclusions we reach. Some of this won’t be popular, so perhaps this chapter can be seen as a sort of “minority report,” and if the government is perceived as being the villain of the UFO story, perhaps that makes me the villain of this book. Even if I am the villain, I still have a story to tell.

The first point to make is that governments look at the UFO phenomenon in a rather different way than the UFO community. They consider the topic—as they consider most issues—in the context of threats and opportunities. It’s worth looking at this in a little detail, because this mindset contextualizes much of what follows.

It may surprise people to know that there’s an equation that defines threat often used in various government, military, and intelligence community agencies. Threat is expressed as capability × intent (as an aside, risk is sometimes defined as probability × harm). When it comes to UFOs, we have some good data on capability. Not just eyewitness testimony from pilots, but radar data, FLIR (Forward-looking Infrared) films from military aircraft, and the associated MASINT (Measurement and Signature Intelligence) data from such films. Simply put, this data suggests an impressive capability, with very high speeds, rapid acceleration, and extreme maneuvers being frequently seen. In the context of our equation, this gives us a high value for capability. With intent, however, we quickly run into an obvious problem, namely a lack of definitive data in a situation where there are multiple competing theories about the nature of the UFO phenomenon. As a further complication, sightings would have to be individually assessed, because different incidents will likely have different causes. Some UFO sightings, for example, will be attributable to misidentifications of drones, meaning that intent could be assigned a value. Other sightings, however, will have no obvious explanation, which raises the question of how we could even begin to define intent. If we were dealing with technology from Russia or China, intelligence officers specializing in these countries could simply assess intent, drawing on their existing knowledge. But if we’re dealing with something unknown—possibly even extraterrestrial—we can’t even begin to make any assessment of intent. Thus, going back to our equation, no accurate value for intent can be given. So, if intent is unknown, even with good information about capability, no meaningful assessment of threat can be given. The threat is unknown.

This quote from a 1997 MoD document illustrates the thinking perfectly:

The second and critical question is do UAPs [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] represent a possible threat to the defense of the realm. We could debate that (assuming for the sake of argument that something exists) they have never shown any hostile intent and therefore can not represent a threat. However, Russian aircraft attempting to penetrate the UK ADR [Air Defense Region] in the Cold War never showed hostile intent but they certainly represented a threat. Thus, the only logical conclusion that we can come to is that we do not know if UAPs represent a threat to the defense of the realm. We cannot eliminate the possibility.

Not only can we not assess the extent of any threat, we can’t say if one exists at all. This, however, allows us to more easily navigate territory in terms of understanding the government’s mindset, because it’s binary: Either a threat exists or it doesn’t. The answer, of course, is simple. The military perspective is that it’s better to assume a threat exists and be relieved when one doesn’t materialize, as opposed to assuming there isn’t a threat, and thus being unprepared if one suddenly emerges. While such a mindset isn’t going to be popular with everyone, it is, perhaps, understandable to those with some knowledge about the way in which government works.

There’s another factor to take into account here: money. In government, an excellent way to get a program funded is to highlight an actual or potential threat, and then put forward your program as being the way to mitigate or eliminate that threat. In relation to UFOs, the issue of threat is always going to be front and center. Indeed, it’s almost an inevitable outcome, which highlights an interesting point about where one places a UFO program. Most nations that have run UFO programs have embedded them in the military (usually the air force), or in the Department of Defense. This placement, in and of itself, results in the approach described here. One exception to this rule is France, where their UFO program is embedded in the French national space agency. The other exception is the Pentagon’s AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) project, which, while originally commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency, was largely conducted in the private sector. As we’ll see later in this chapter when AATIP will be discussed in more detail, it’s an interesting point that where you embed a UFO program has a discernable effect not just on mindset and methodology, but arguably on outcomes too.


Copyright © 2021 by Alan Steinfeld

Foreword copyright © 2020 by George Noory

“Introduction,” “Extraordinary Actuality: My Journey to the Stars,” and “Epilogue” copyright © 2020 by Alan Steinfeld

“Government Mindset and Our Future Among the Stars” copyright © 2020 by Nick Pope

“UFO Disclosure and the Theory of Wow” copyright © 2020 by Grant Cameron. Portions transcribed from a talk given at the Conscious Life Expo, Los Angeles, February 2019.

“Extraterrestrials and Multidimensional Nonlocal Reality” copyright © 2020 by Dr. J. J. Hurtak and Dr. Desiree Hurtak

“Contact in the Implicate Order” copyright © 2020 by Linda Moulton Howe

“Studying Intrusions from the Subtle Realm: How Can We Deepen Our Knowledge?” copyright © 2020 by John E. Mack estate. Essay developed from a talk given by John E. Mack, M.D., at the International Association for New Science Conference, September 16, 1995, Fort Collins, Colorado. Copyright © 1995 by John E. Mack.

“The Return of the Visitors” copyright © 2020 by Whitley Strieber, portions from Strieber’s A New World, copyright © 2019 by Walker & Collier, Inc.

“Something Moving” copyright © 2020 by Henrietta Weekes

“Awakening to Our Cosmic Heritage” copyright © 2020 by Mary Rodwell

“ET Lineages and Human Evolution” (from an interview with Alan Steinfeld) copyright © 2020 by Caroline Cory