They are definitely among us, at least in the media and popular culture.

Formerly classified documents are being released in mass quantities. Spielberg has made what promises to be another blockbuster movie about it. Government officials at the highest level levels now speak openly about it.

Disclosure, through the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) is happening as I write this. There is widespread talk of some immanent, civilization-changing event.

But to me, there is only one question, and one revelation worth pondering.

The question is what are we afraid of? If there is even a modicum of evidence to substantiate the fact that there is extraterrestrial life, why has it been actively suppressed for decades?

The question appears to have two plausible answers.

There are many theories as to why we should be afraid of an alien species. They range from the absurd (they’re coming to eat all of us) to the unlikely (they want to dominate us and make slaves of us). A life form technologically advanced enough to traverse millions of light years of distance probably doesn’t need slaves. If they have figured out interstellar travel, they probably have an adequate food source.

I think the two most plausible causes for obfuscating what is actually known originate right here on earth.

As is frequently the case with human history, both cases are manifestations of greed, for power and money.

The first plausible explanation for disclosure phobia is that, in fact, we do have access to technology that did not originate in this place and time. That technology has been reverse engineered to some extent, and its secrets shared with a very small number of aerospace companies.

Imagine for a moment a situation in which an alien craft—by gift or mishap—is in the possession of a government. To unlock the secrets of that alien craft, this hypothetical government enlists the services of a hypothetical aerospace contractor with the brain power and resources most likely to reverse engineer it’s secrets.

Now, let’s just pick an aerospace contractor at random. Let’s speculate the company is someone like…I don’t know…Lockheed Martin. Hypothetically.

After all, they did pretty good with the P-80 Shooting Star, the U-2 Dragon Lady, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Nighthawk, and the F-22 Raptor & F-35 Lightning II, and are now working on projects like the NASA X-59, MDCX Controls, Vectis (for ISTAR operations, of course), CJADC2 & CMMT.

All were remarkable technological leaps for their eras—exactly the kind of programs that fuel speculation about what governments and contractors may actually know.

Now imagine (again, hypothetically of course) that a deal is struck. The deal goes something like this: "You contractor guys figure out how it works, and we will use taxpayer dollars—many trillions of them—to pay you to build it for us."

Fast-forward 75 years.

The government decides to tell the public that in fact, we are not alone and have been working, if not directly with an extraterrestrial species, with the spoils of one or more of their craft.

Now consider the very real possibility of the multi-trillion-dollar lawsuits that may be filed by other contractors who did not have access to that technology, and as a result have fallen impossibly far behind in the corporate arms race.

That scenario seems to be plausible, given human nature, and would definitely be a reason to keep the whole alien technology idea under wraps for as long as possible.

In short, plausible scenario number one is that disclosure is gonna cost a lot of powerful people an unimaginable amount of money.

The second plausible reason is perhaps the most compelling.

The predominant religious ideologies hold that there is one God, and that God created one special species on one special planet out of all of creation. This is a fundamental tenet of most common theology.

Back when all we knew was our tiny chunk of earth and most people never got more than 20 or 25 miles from their birthplace, that idea was at least partially defensible. Now we have amazing technology like the James Webb Space Telescope that implies the universe could be unimaginably more vast—and more fertile—than our previous estimations.

When the universe holds untold trillions of possible planets that could sustain life as we understand it, the possibility that we are the only chosen ones on a single chosen planet, orbiting a relatively unremarkable, tiny star becomes mathematically implausible.

In other words, based on our current technology, it is highly unlikely that we are the only sentient life form in the universe.

Now consider a power base that goes far beyond a handful of government aerospace contracts. In fact, this power base reaches the majority of people alive on the planet today, and even a larger percentage of all the people who have ever lived on the planet.

What do religious leaders do if the public learns that there may be many intelligent species on many inhabited worlds?

Religion is the only game in town that claims to be able to save you from existential extinction, from death itself. That’s worth a lot of political power and money.

What, after all, are you willing to pay for salvation?

When the underlying beliefs of what you’ve been preaching—literally—for millennia are called into question by evidence-backed science, people may start to question the entire narrative. The believers who believed—based solely upon your word and your stories—may no longer believe. And if they no longer believe, they stop supporting your institutions.

Is this scenario even possible?

Think about it objectively: your institution is built on hope, faith and belief—but has no compelling evidence to substantiate it. Now your most basic propositions are contradicted by technologically-supported evidence. It’s not a giant leap to see people leaving the folds in masses.

So the two most plausible reasons that disclosure has been delayed and is still extensively suffering massive reduction and pushback have nothing to do with national defense. Those who repeat that refrain have the most to lose.

Those who withhold information from us to protect us from “mass hysteria” vastly underestimate us.

The revelation becomes apparent when we move beyond the beyond the posturing and control and fear-mongering, when we realize what we are really talking about.

In my view, the most impactful result of an honest, complete, well-supported disclosure of extraterrestrial life—evidence so compelling that we could not deny it—is that we would be faced with the most astounding fact in all of human history:

We are not alone.

You need look no further than the reaction to Galileo’s assertion that the earth wasn’t the center of the solar system to have an idea of how difficult it is to revise previously entrenched doctrine. Imagine the theological fallout from the assertion that humanity itself may not be central to the universe. 

This revelation would raise many more questions than it answers, and would disrupt many large and well-funded institutions of power at an unprecedented level.

I understand the the emotional reaction; humans fear losing their centrality. But if we can get beyond our primitive, initial reaction—to fear and want to control that which we don’t understand—we may be able to see a different possibility.

If a species has been able to transcend seemingly immutable constraints of physics, and travel distances we can barely comprehend, that species likely has also learned to transcend the tendencies towards territorial tribalism that once threatened to destroy its own civilization, if indeed it ever had those tendencies.

All of this is, of course, pure speculation on my part. I’m not saying that I believe any of it; that any of it is true.

But while I’m imagining things, I find it relatively easy to imagine that there are millions, maybe billions, of people on this planet right now that think as I do: that if somewhere there is a civilization reaching out—as we do—it may be only to celebrate consciousness and communication.

To not be alone.



Read my recent interview with Dr. Mehmet Yildiz here.

My novel, The Calling is available now in print and as an eBook.


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- JWW