The Overclassification of Military Secrets

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UAP is a rebranding of Project Blue Book, which was an effort by the military to see something say something where they asked people to send in reports. Now there's a like central place where pilots can file their reports and say, oh, we saw this thing. And then that sort of lets that part of it take it on. The pivot goes from, "We're going to tell people, we're going to look at the sky," says David Frum.

Paris Marx is joined by Kelsey Atherton to discuss the renewed interest in UFOs, where the conspiracy theories of aliens in the sky came from, and whether flying saucers might really be watching us.

Kelsey Atherton is a military technology journalist. He contributes to Popular Science and has written for Slate. Follow Kelsey on Twitter at @AthertonKD.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Kelsey has written about how the military’s culture of secrecy breeds UFO conspiracy theories, why sensors are an important aspect to consider, and the truth of Area 51.
A U-2 pilot took a selfie with the Chinese balloon shot down earlier this year.
The military later confirmed the Chinese balloon was not actually spying on the United States.
One of the balloons that were shot down likely belonged to a hobbyist group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade.
In 2019, a bunch of people online planned to hold a “Naruto run” at Area 51.

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