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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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Hm. Certainly cause for an update if accurate, but do these people make the same claims as the "little grey men" crowd around the people that I mentioned? My impression was that there was a separate push a few years ago around the "Tic Tac" videos, which was much more measured and ambiguous and had the vibes of some intel operation that is too 8D-chessy for me to understand, rather than actual hints of confirmed aliens. (Baiting someone into revealing or believing something? My favourite theory at the time was that some branch of the USG wanted to signal to the PRC that they may have developed tech for spoofing input to/coherently dazzling complex integrated sensor systems, by way of using it on their own during a training exercise) It makes sense that that sort of undertaking would get fire support from real top brass. Did any of the people you listed directly vouch for any member of the batch that I mentioned?

Off the top of my head (so I might get a few details wrong):

The Tic Tac videos were (essentially) an intel operation – it was Mellon, Elizondo and Company getting the UAP topic into the New York Times and into the public discourse. The actual incident had been publicly discussed (and IIRC even video footage released) well before it made it into the Times, but Team Mellon was able to get the footage released with a chain of custody and get their narrative into the big leagues. The goal of the operation (ostensibly) was to get people to take the UAP topic seriously. If there's a psyop, it seems to lead straight into the little grey men territory rather than just showing off advanced technology (although of course the US of A might want China to think it has a crashed flying saucer...)

  • Mellon wrote the forward to Lue's book. He's not necessarily vouching for all of the claims, but he seems to take them seriously. This is notable in my mind since he probably was behind the scenes helping write Congressional legislation around this stuff, and if you look at what Congress has been drafting it has, unironically, been stuff along the lines of "GIVE US THE ALIEN CRAFT."
  • Milley/Haines/McMaster/Brennan seem more to take e.g. the issue seriously, but haven't to my knowledge made claims along the lines of Grush or Elizondo. I believe Haines was open to the possibility of ET life being responsible for UAP sightings, and Brennan suggested UAP might be (or be the product of?) some form of life.
  • Ratcliffe basically said "we're picking up crazy signatures from classified intelligence capabilities" (I think he at least implied recon satellites, but he may have stated it outright.) I'm not as familiar with what Gallaudet said, but I think it was along similar lines – he had seen good footage or other evidence during his time in the navy. He might be open to the "little grey men" stuff but I don't think he claims to have firsthand experience.
  • I assume Malmgren used the term "otherworld technologies" on purpose. He said his informal briefing was "60+" years ago, so if there's an op to fool the PRC it's gone back decades (perhaps involving the 1952 UFO flap over D.C. and the 1971 treaty we signed with the USSR that mentions the risk from unidentified objects on early warning radars? Interestingly Nixon was president in '71, I wonder if Malmgren was involved in that treaty.) Note that Malmgren has said he has no firsthand experience, it seems like (he claims) Bissel informally brought him up to speed in case it ever came up. Which of course raises the possibility that Bissel was just lying (or of course that Malmgren is lying, but I dunno why he would bother).