Extraterrestrial gatekeepers can’t be trusted to police truth

Anyone who has watched the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens knows that the show’s hosts love to attribute just about any ancient feat to aliens: Who built Stonehenge? Aliens. What about the pyramids? Aliens. What killed off the dinosaurs? Aliens, obviously. The program even presented a supposed bigfoot/alien connection.

Much of the show centers around the laughably ridiculous, but some people evidently buy into these arguments and accept them as truth. This is probably harmless, but the problem of malicious fake news and disinformation is a growing global threat that undermines faith in elections and institutions. It has proliferated to such a degree that Pew found the majority of Americans believe the government should “restrict false information” even if it limits the First Amendment.

This is a terrible idea for many reasons. Unnecessarily curtailing freedom of speech is a dangerous slippery slope to authoritarianism and entirely losing your rights. Even innocuous speech could be censored. I am not sure Ancient Aliens would survive under such a heavy-handed regime. It seems to outwardly peddle debunked and outlandish alien theories. This aside, the feds haven’t remotely earned the faith needed to police speech, and a recent military report on UFOs inadvertently demonstrates that the government cannot be trusted as an arbiter of truth.

While there have been a number of alleged UFO sightings reported by mainstream news and investigated by Congress and the military, the Pentagon released a tranche of information that is sure to take the wind out of the conspiracy theorists’ sails. After a months-long investigation, it found, “U.S. military fabricated evidence of alien technology and allowed rumors to fester to cover up real secret-weapons programs,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

One case investigators examined was the curious 1967 incident on a Montana military nuclear installation. One night, an orange oval appeared and seemed to hover over the base’s gate, and then the unthinkable happened. All 10 nuclear-armed missiles went offline; they were inoperable, and the commander was ordered to never discuss the matter.

If you were to ask the Ancient Aliens host to explain this, the answer would be obvious: “It’s aliens, man.” And that has become the prevailing opinion, but was it really little green men? The recent Pentagon report says no. It was a military test all along.

At the time, military brass was worried that an electromagnetic pulse from a Soviet nuclear bomb could take their missiles offline. So they tested it with an electromagnetic generator that tended to glow orange and rested atop a 60-foot platform. Sure enough, it disabled our nukes. Instead of admitting that the Soviets could render our nuclear missiles inoperable, the Pentagon either propagated the alien theory or at least didn’t do anything to dispute it.

The Pentagon also investigated other UFO reports, which turned out to be longstanding jokes. For decades, Air Force officials were briefed on a “secret alien project,” and were warned that they could be executed for speaking about it. This turned out to be nothing more than hazing.

Another episode centered around an Air Force colonel who visited a bar near the infamous Area 51 in the 1980s. “He gave the owner photos of what might be flying saucers,” the Wall Street Journal noted. “But the colonel was on a mission—of disinformation. The photos were doctored […] The whole exercise was a ruse to protect what was really going on at Area 51: The Air Force was using the site to develop top-secret stealth fighters.”

“Investigators are still trying to determine whether the spread of disinformation was the act of local commanders and officers or a more centralized, institutional program,” the Wall Street Journal continued. Someone needs to do a wellness check on the Ancient Aliens gang because this has to be unsettling for them. I am sure they will claim that the recent Pentagon report is the real disinformation. However, this is a vivid reminder that, despite a majority of Americans wanting to empower the feds to police the truth, the government shouldn’t be implicitly trusted with this authority.

Rather, consumers are the best front-line defense against disinformation. They can verify questionable stories with numerous established independent media outlets, and rely on Occam’s Razor. It states, “the simplest, most elegant explanation is usually the one closest to the truth.” In short, the most obvious answer is generally the correct one.

So is the Pentagon report true or more disinformation? I will let my readers decide for themselves. Just remember: The truth is out there, but you may not consistently get it from the government or Ancient Aliens for that matter. Don’t let that stop you from learning more about the alleged bigfoot/alien connection.