“Honestly, I think I would know if there were aliens”

It’s a long time since I’ve read anything interesting about UFOs, but this article for NBC by Rizwan Virk, founder of Play Labs at MIT, seems to indicate that – while the area of ufology is generally mocked by scientists and big tech – there’s obviously something significant happening. Virk rounds up the usual recent news from the US military admitting they are investigating unidentified objects that they encounter. The famous toc tac is mentioned. Stills from fuzzy footage are shown. What I wasn’t aware of was that senior officials at the Pentagon have been investigating UFOs for a while:

“Now recently retired national security officials are speaking out. In the run-up to the task force’s report in June, John Ratcliffe, former director of national intelligence, told Fox News last month that there were “a lot more sightings than have been made public.” Similarly, James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, said on a podcast this month he was taking the subject seriously, as did a successor at the CIA, John Brennan, in December… According to Brennan, some of the phenomena we’re seeing “could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.” U.S. Navy pilots who have actually seen the Tic Tac craft are even more direct, with one telling the Post it was “Something not from the Earth.”

Virk enthusastically argues that taking UFOs seriously could have major implications for science.

The U.S. military takes UFOs seriously. Why doesn’t Silicon Valley or academia?