That is the subject of my latest Bloomberg column. Here is the opener:
There is currently legislation before Congress that, if passed, could be one of the most important laws in US history. The Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2023, which calls for transparency in matters related to UFOs, is sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and has considerable bipartisan support, although it may fail due to Republican opposition.
However skeptical you or I might be, there are many allegations from within the federal government that the government is hiding alien crafts and bodies, and that the military is seeking to reverse-engineer alien technologies. There are also more plausible claims that there are flying objects that defy explanation.
And:
…if you think all this talk of aliens is nonsense, isn’t the best response some sunlight to show nothing weird is going on?
That is the strongest argument for the bill: if all the recent UAP chatter reflects neither an alien presence nor threats from hostile foreign powers. In that case, drawing back the curtain would discourage reasonable observers from pursuing the topic further. A modest benefit would result.
What about hostile foreign powers as an explanation for the UAPs?:
In that case, additional transparency could be harmful. The US government conducts a variety of intelligence and military operations, and Congress does not insist that they all be made public. There is no transparency for CIA missions, or for US cyberattacks, or for many other aspects of US foreign policy.
In that scenario the case against the bill is relatively strong. And what about good ol’ alien beings and spacecraft?
In that case, is the best policy really what transparency advocates call “managed disclosure”? They had envisioned a panel of responsible experts managing the flow of information, bit by bit.
One question is whether such knowledge might be better kept secret, or known only to the small number of elites who manage to put all of the pieces together. Whether a broad social panic would result from revealing an alien presence on earth is hard to say — but it is also hard to see the practical upside. The best argument for disclosure is simply that the public has a right to know, and that such a knowledge of the reality of the humankind’s place in the universe is intrinsically valuable.
A second question concerns the inexorable logic of disclosure. Practically speaking, the US has a long tradition of whistleblowers and truth-tellers. If there is actual hard evidence of alien visitation, it is going to leak out, with or without the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023. Just look at the Edward Snowden case, where an American risked imprisonment and exile to reveal secrets that were far less important than what could be at stake here.
If the current legislation does not pass, or if a much weaker version moves forward, some people may take that as their cue to step forward and spill the beans — with direct proof rather than hearsay.
So in that “most interesting” case a transparency bill may not matter for long. That means I am not crushed that the disclosure provisions of the bill have been so watered down. In the case where those provisions really matter, a) it may be better if we don’t know, and b) we will find out sooner or later anyway. Aliens and UAPs aside, the appropriate degree of transparency is one of the most difficult questions in politics.
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