Luis Elizondo for Medium: A career working in intelligence for the U.S. government has taught me one important lesson: national security is a lot like chess. You must anticipate your opponent’s every move to stay one step ahead.
Revealing your strategy will be used against you. But if you recognize certain opportunities, you can win the match.
When I led the government’s highly sensitive Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), I worked with a team to assess whether a particular chess piece – in this case in the form of an unknown aerial technology – posed a threat to our side of chess. plate.
If so, we needed to know how to counter it.
Because the government views Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) as a potential national security problem, they are necessarily secretive. They don’t want to reveal any information to a potential enemy.
But there are risks associated with keeping that information confidential.
Suppose the person who first learned to harness fire never shared it with the next generation, or the person who invented the telescope threw it away when he was done with it. What if the creator of the wheel decided it was too labor intensive for others to build and decided, “Forget it”?
As a species we are meant to evolve. And we needed that progress to get where we are now. Reports of strange crafts with seemingly inexplicable properties have circulated within the US government for at least seventy years, suggesting that it is not going away. There is ‘something out there’.
Releasing certain information about UAP and sharing it with the public could lead to new technological discoveries, new forms of medical research, and a broader view of how humanity understands reality.
Here’s why: a government must assume everything is a threat until proven otherwise.
When determining whether an unknown entity is friend or foe, the U.S. government looks at factors such as capabilities, intent, vulnerabilities and exploitability. A closer look at these factors reveals how little UAPs are understood.
Advances in our understanding of physics at the quantum level have helped shed light on the potential science behind UAPs. But these advances have also shown us that UAPs also have superior technical knowledge.
If these capabilities were to fall into the hands of a foreign adversary, it would be a decisive game changer.
Likewise, the intentions of UAPs have not been made clear to us at this time. There could be a number of reasons for their presence, ranging from peaceful curiosity to an investigation into battlespace preparation. The possibilities are numerous.
However, UAP vulnerabilities remain a complete mystery. Some have hypothesized that there is a link between UAPs and our nuclear capabilities, while others have suggested that nuclear-generated electromagnetic pulses are a potential weakness.
Regardless, we still don’t really know what vulnerabilities UAPs might have, beyond speculation. It’s anyone’s guess at this point.
From a national security perspective, exploitation is the holy grail of all efforts. Determining whether UAP technology can be reverse-engineered and used to our advantage is critical, but we cannot exploit such technology unless we first understand it.
When it comes to UAPs, the US knows less than it should, and perhaps much less than our adversaries.
The potential benefits outweigh the risks
There is always some risk involved when it comes to communicating national security issues to the public. But it’s subjective. The extent of that risk depends on who you ask.
For example, if you ask any military leader, they would say that government secrecy about advanced aerospace phenomena is critical because you want to prevent your capabilities and intentions from being passed on to your potential enemy.
A politician would view UAPs very differently. They may wonder, “Is this something potential voters need to know, or will hiding it cause my voters to lose confidence in me?” How does this discussion impact voters and my ability to represent them?”
A religious figure, on the other hand, would likely be more concerned about the religious and philosophical implications that UAPs might have for his or her faith.
There are countless examples throughout history of individuals challenging prevailing systems of power with radical scientific ideas.
For example, when Galileo told the church hundreds of years ago that the Earth was not the center of the solar system, they almost killed him for it.
As someone with no political or religious agenda, I feel free to say that the rewards in this situation outweigh the risks. For example, in December 2017, our team at To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science helped release US military footage of UAPs. No government imploded, no religion dissolved.
Like Galileo, our mission is simple. Collect and spread the truth about the unknown. As long as the risks do not endanger national security, the rewards can benefit everyone.
Scientific truths help move society forward
At this point there is no doubt that UAPs exist – they do. People can choose to either continue living with their heads in the sand, or they can approach the phenomenon proactively.
Centuries ago, when humanity first stood on the shore of a beach and contemplated sailing over the horizon, the chorus shouted, “You’re crazy! You’re going to fall off the earth! There are sea monsters!”
But now, in the 21st century, people travel across the oceans every day. What our ancestors thought were sea monsters are great white sharks, blue whales and giant squids. It turns out they’re just part of our natural environment.
Once people wanted to discover the truth for themselves, it was no longer mystical, it was just nature.
But because government processes require secrecy when dealing with classified information, false knowledge about UAPs spreads quickly. Secrecy allows people to sell their snake oil and YouTubers profit from spreading their misinformed stories about UFOs. Soon people start to believe that Elvis lives on the mothership, just like they once believed that you could fall off the edge of the earth.
The more knowledge people have, the better they will be able to control their own destiny and not be held hostage by the monsters of their imagination.
Author: Luis Elizondo, former US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent, source Medium
