A New York Times preview of the much-noted Pentagon report on UFOs suggests pretty much what I expected. The military, which has been tracking strange objects in the sky for nearly 70 years will officially say they have no evidence anything about these incidents is the result of space aliens space. But … and this is significant … America’s military, for which we spent $714 billion in 2020, will also say they have no idea what — or who — has been regularly invading American airspace, over water, land and heavily populated areas for going on a century … at least.

I certainly have no explanation for the most confounding UFO incidents. (My old pal, Marty Keller, a long-time UFO-ologist is finishing a book based on his years studying the phenomenon. I’ll hype it when it is published.) But I find the conversation about UFOs and life beyond this planet pretty damn interesting. As speculative dialogue goes, theories about whether, how and why intelligent life from deep space may have visited Earth is a lot … a lot … more interesting and intellectually satisfying than arguing against the average Trumper idiocy of Jewish space lasers igniting forest fires or Italy rigging satellites to switch votes and steal the election from a corrupt reality TV character with incontinence issues.

The legendary sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, who I had the pleasure to interview once, said many memorable things about existence in this universe.

Asked about the likelihood we are alone in 14 billion years of evolution, Clarke said, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

He also said, in the context of trying to “explain” Stanley Kubrick and his movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

That said, here are some random thoughts I return to any time the conversation of life beyond Earth comes up.

1: I have a hard time believing in the little green or grey men theory. Or more specifically, the idea that biological entities would cross the vast distances of space. In humans’ perpetual and long-term quest for “immortality”, there are — right now today — serious, if nascent, attempts to transfer/upload human intelligence into some form of “indestructible” artificial intelligence, generally described as “computer-based.” Credible scientists believe a semblance of such “singularity” will be achieved within the next generation. Whether that transfer is still “human” can be argued. But the emergence of an AI “life-form” capable of analyzing data and making self-sustaining decisions strikes me as all but certain by the end of the century.

Point being, a truly advanced civilization, possibly millions of years further along the evolutionary scale than we are, would achieve any exploratory goal it wanted across space by dispersing highly-miniaturized, if not invisible (to the human eye), undetectable AI sensors. Large, clumsy, radar-detectable metallic saucers piloted by weird humanoids — who occasionally crash and die — seems absurd, given just the technologies within our grasp.

2: So if they are visitors from advanced civilizations, why are UFOs detectable? The answer here could be, “Because they want us to see them.” Someone recently made the analogy of a drone flying over a pack of monkeys to describe a super-race’s concern about humans noticing their presence. This fits with the thinking that to a species a couple hundred years further along than us, much less millions of years, we are nothing more than a biological curiosity, a primitive first step in becoming something serious in an inter-planetary context. (Insert another Trump rally reference here.) They allow us to detect them simply to gauge our developing response to them.

3: Continuing with the monkeys-excited-by-drone analogy, I’ve long thought an advanced space-faring civilization would have about as much trouble controlling our minds, and our response to their presence, as we have hypnotizing chickens. Think of it as a Jedi mind-trick. “Nothing to see here silly, ill-formed bi-peds. Resume your business.”

My favorite large-scale example of this was the reaction to the famous 1997 Phoenix lights incident, in which thousands of people witnessed extremely strange aerial phenomenon directly over the city … of four million people. The uproar was so great that then Gov. Fife Symington held a news conference to debunk everything, to the point of dressing up one of his aides as an alien … just for the laughs, you understand. Never mind no one up on the official dais had any explanation for the object(s) seen passing/hovering with impunity over a large American city. I mean, WTF, what are we paying you guys for?

It’s worth noting that Symington, who resigned from office later that year after being indicted on bank fraud and extortion, later conceded the incident was likely extra-terrestial.

4: I’m open to believing — or enjoying the conversation — that rather than making the long, long, speed-of-light leap across space, or zipping through a worm hole, or molting over via a connection with a “multi-verse”, intelligent alien species have been here on Earth for a very, very long time. The “Goldilocks” positioning of Earth from its star may have narrowed this planet as a prime target for interstellar explorers millions/billions of years ago and they “seeded” it with AI sensors/life-forms to track our progress (or lack thereof).

This idea is the basis of Arthur Clarke’s novel, “The Sentinel”, from which “2001” evolved. And again, you can entertain the idea that such a civilization would have no problem — none — disguising its presence from our pitiful technologies. I can’t recall the title, but there was a cheesy sci-fi film years ago that had aliens hiding in plain sight, as essentially, nanobots no larger than grains of sand, but with all the presumed powers of an advanced race.

So no, I have no idea what is on those Navy radars, or what went on over Phoenix, but it is significant that the Pentagon is now saying it doesn’t know either.

(BTW: The photo for this blog was taken in Roswell, New Mexico. And if you’re reading this on Facebook, my profile picture — with the little man on my shoulder — was shot on the plains outside Corona, NM, where the 1947 UFO “crash” supposedly took place.)