Not to get all conspiracy theory-y on my writing blog, but it’s kinda hard to ignore the latest congressional hearing on UFOs, or as they now call them, UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomenon). I had something else written for today, but after watching some of the hearing yesterday, I decided to write this up instead. If you’d like to check out the whole thing you can find it here. To sum up, a few whistleblowers have come forward and basically said that extra terrestrials are real, and that the government and many large defense companies in the US have been covering it up for decades. Not only that, but they apparently have captured UFOs in their possession, including bodies. Yeah, I can’t believe I just wrote that either. This is a big break from the norm for congress who have historically denied this sort of thing entirely. It’s pretty wild, and I don’t know what to make of it really, but I love speculative fiction, and hey, this is right out of a good sci-fi novel. Congress even passed a bunch of legislation right after this. The gist is, they want to push for disclosing all kinds of previously secret UFO programs, and defund any unauthorized UFO programs. It’s a lot to take in, and maybe it’s all a big crock, who knows, but if anything comes of it, I hope we take it seriously. There’s lots of people in the comments of these recorded hearings saying we should be opening up captured UFOs to public research, and I believe this is powerful sentiment is one that a lot of people will hold going forward. I’m not so sure that’s a good idea though.

Given that congress is taking it seriously, and pushing to make this information public, maybe we should really think hard about whether investigating this technology is wise. I think doing this carries existential risks, both internal and external, that we need to think about before researching this technology on a public level. If any of this is true, then up until now, anything in our possession has been a well kept secret, sequestered away by small groups of individuals hell bent on keeping it from anybody else. If disclosure really happens and we suddenly mobilize globally to figure out how their technology works, going from those small groups to potentially millions of researchers all focused on one thing, that could be taken as a massive threat by even the most benevolent species.

Think about how they must view our use of technology. We haven’t even utilized our own stuff to the full extent that it could help others, in fact we often use it to do the opposite. We pollute the environment, destroy natural habitats to replace them with our own structures, and generally speaking, have attempted to dominate the planet by means of violence and rapid expansion since the invention of conquest. Up until very recently we enslaved our own kind, practiced colonial genocide on continental scales, and otherwise subjugated those who remained. A lot of our technology does, of course, go to improving our everyday lives, from the electric grid, to transportation, medical technology, and other stuff that’s hard to deny the benefits of. Even military research usually ends up in the hands of civilians eventually. The fact remains that a lot of the advances we’ve made have been used first and foremost to combat threats, both real and perceived. Often when we get a new technology we weaponize it before even thinking of doing something else because we don’t see any other option in the midst of an arms race. We’re deeply afraid of each other for good reason, and those are the same reasons that aliens would fear us too.

Speaking as a human myself, I don’t think we really deserve the power of technology that’s advanced beyond our own inventions at this time. Imagine if we applied the practices we have on planet Earth for the entire existence of our species to wherever these supposed non humans come from. If their craft can go there, and we figure out how they work, then we can go there too. We went from preindustrial society to nuking each other in less than 300 years. We went from never having flown through the air to visiting our moon in less than a human lifespan. Computers continue to evolve at an exponential rate even though they already have been for decades. The precedent for incredibly rapid technological growth is already there. We’re more than capable of exploding into a new era of progress in seconds, and if they’re real, they probably know that too. If we crack whatever wall separates us and them, I think it’s over for us. I’d probably pull the trigger if I were them. By our very nature, we offer them no time to hesitate because if we even get close to their level of tech then we it means we must be gaining on them faster than they’re making progress, no matter how advanced they are.

Maybe the reason we haven’t figured how to use this stuff already isn’t because the people who are holding this technology are too stupid, but because they’re too smart. Maybe it would be best to pile this stuff up somewhere and leave it alone, put a big sign on it that says ‘please take this back’ and go on with our lives. Even if the original owners don’t care if we have it, do we really want people with more money than sense taking advantage of this crap, screwing with physics we don’t understand when we only have one single planet to live on? I can’t believe anybody thinks we would use UAP technology 100% responsibly, and that’s what it would take to make sure nobody gets hurt while we break physics. Beyond what they might do to us, what might we do to ourselves with this stuff? If any government manages to take any of it away from the people who have it now, I don’t think we should be doing anything with it at all. Maybe we should just leave this big ol’ Pandora’s box at the bottom of the ocean until further notice.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley