Basically as far as I can tell a group of UFO believers within the Pentagon has been gaslighting and grifting the government to divert funds and resources away from surveillance for mundane threats like drones and spy balloons, in order to search for alien spacecraft[0]. The media, being the media, conflated numerous disparate conspiracy theories and stories into a vague quasi-narrative about tic-tacs and anti-gravity patents[1]. The government UAP hearing[2] wasn't the "disclosure" UFO believers wanted it to be, but the hype and speculation fueled the craze nonetheless. Finally the arc culminated with the Chinese spy balloon incident which people believed was secretly some kind of war between the government and alien spacecraft[3], but which turned out to be... a Chinese spy balloon and a whole lot of nothing. I think they shot down some kid's science project or something.