[thedorkknight]

The director of national intelligence explicitly said in a Congressional hearing last may that they want to destigmatize UAP sightings so that pilots will actually report them when they happen. It hasn't really been a big mystery why some people in the government have been trying to change the attitude around UFOs recently - that's why they use the term UAP instead, less cultural baggage

[jasonwatkinspdx]

I'm sorry this just isn't an honest description of what's happened. Destigmatizing reporting UFOs is good. What factually happened is a handful of wackos from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Stars_(company) funded by the front man of Blink 182. They befriended billionaire Robert Bigelow that pulled influence for them in congress and hence they got their little scam project a veneer of legitimacy it frankly does not deserve.

These are the same clowns that have claimed to have extant physical samples of extraterrestrial materials, but only offered them to independent examination once, which didn't go well supporting their claims, and have paraded an endless number of excuses since while doubling down on claims it offers incontrovertible proof.

There's no big mystery here, these are relatively unsophisticated conspiracy nuts that got above average traction. That's it.

[thedorkknight]

That's not "it". These two things are not mutually exclusive. TtSA and Tom Delonge have definitely done a lot, especially/particularly in the general public's interest, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm hearing with my own ears from the DNI telling Congress he wants to increase effort to collect UAP data for national defense

[pvaldes]

So either they have info about an imminent alien arrival, or will have to admit that this is happening since several years ago, in at least three waves (probably), and that they knew about it.

[somat]

You are making the very error that lead to UFO sightings being stigmatized in the first place.

The trick is to remember that it is like the sql NULL. No unidentified object matches any other unidentified object. It is only once you identify the object can you claim that it is of extra terrestrial origin not before. And once you identify the object it is no longer a UFO.

[pvaldes]

Or maybe the real trick is having a lot of fans hunting UFOs like "is 1980 again", while you keep the secret for yourself and build a plausible denial way out. Who knows?