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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29395 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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Reposting another post from last week which @Blueberry put up right before the CW thread switched over:

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So any opinions on the drone sightings in New Jersey? Is it just mass hysteria and people mistake airplanes for drones? Are they aliens? Supernatural phenomenon? Just a distributed prank by drone owners?

So far the confusion and appeal to the government is bipartisan:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/15/politics/mysterious-drone-sightings-lawmakers-criticize-response/index.html

Lawmakers from across the political spectrum on Sunday criticized the federal government’s response to mysterious drone sightings in the Northeast, as officials emphasize there is no evidence of a security threat.

Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, also expressed frustration with the administration’s response to the public. “The government has a real responsibility to put more information out there so people better understand what the real dangers are,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Trump said Friday that the government needs to convey more information and shoot down the drones.

Asked Sunday about the president-elect’s post calling on the government to shoot down the drones, Mayorkas said, “We are limited in our authorities.”

What drives me crazy is that only phone videos seem to exist and phone cameras suck for faraway objects in the night. Is there not one good camera with a zoom in New York/New Jersey?

Edit:
This orb ABC News was puzzled over is really an out of focus Venus:
https://x.com/MatthewCappucci/status/1868052013164134899

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I know many Mottizans think this is all just deep state weapons testing or something, and I’m curious for theories in that vein along with more esoteric ones?

What does the U.S. gain from this? Will Trump meaningfully increase what we know about these drones or muddy the waters?

How much do we not know still about what the spooks are up to?

Trump talked about the drones at a press conference. As best I remember, he refused to say if he had been briefed, said they couldn't be foreign, and said the US government should say what they are. Assuming Trump was briefed and is not being misleading this means the drones are likely controlled by the US government. The military has massive bases on which to test drones, so I'm guessing the drones are looking for something.

Tests on a base in the middle of nowhere are necessary, but running tests in more real-world conditions (such as over other bases or naval formations) is extremely valuable. It's quite possible that's what this is.

Could be, but then why wouldn't the military admit what it is doing?

Their default is to not tell anyone anything and they aren't getting enough political pressure from the Biden admin to be more open.

Why would they? If they leave it vague, "we are conducting tests of classified defense technology over civilian airspace," that would make everyone freak out more. If they say specifically what they're testing, that compromises our counterintelligence efforts.

Is that true? There is a military base within 50 miles of where I live and we occasionally get loud military jets going overhead. We don't expect to be told the purpose of the flights and accept the inconvenience as part of the price of having a strong military

Because the first, second, and third impulse in the classified world is to keep your mouth shut and admit nothing. Admitting the program's existence to the public (assuming it exists) would likely require pretty high-level approval, possibly even the SecDef, or the CIA director if it's under them instead of the military.

There has to be military/defense contractor drone testing and exercises happening somewhere I’m sure. We need to be on the bleeding edge of this tech and it would be negligent of the US military to not be working with drones to improve our capacity. And, yes, they don’t ever discuss any weapons/tech testing except in very controlled releases of information.

I’m personally impressed by what absolutely fantastic cover the public is providing for these operations. Is got to be so much easier to deny something like this when the loudest voices out there are providing some of the most absurd “drone” footage. “Why are all of these mysterious lights lined up above a major airport?”, or the blimp one, or Venus etc. Any adversaries trying to do open intelligence gathering on the minority of these incidents that likely really are military drone tests have to shovel through mountains of absolute delusional garbage posting on the internet.

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