‘No Indication of Aliens,’ White House Insists of Downed UFOs
The United States has been shooting down a lot of unidentified flying objects lately, also known as UFOs. The government hasn’t provided much information about what exactly is happening, which has led to plenty of speculation about whether said UFOs were launched from the Earth or … somewhere else.
The White House indicated on Monday that it’s the former. “There is no — again, no — indication of aliens or extra-terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, illiciting laughter from the press corp.
John Kirby of the National Security Council reassured Americans they aren’t in danger, as well. “I don’t think the American people need to worry about aliens,” he said later, adding, however, that they “have not yet been able to definitively assess what these most recent objects are.”
But just because Jean-Pierre says there’s no indication the objects are alien doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t alien, nor does Kirby saying the American people shouldn’t be worried.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, who oversees North American airspace for the Air Force, didn’t seem so sure about the objects’ origin when talking to the press on Sunday. “I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven’t ruled out anything,” he said when asked whether he had ruled out the possibility that the UFOs were extra-terrestrial.
The speculation is born largely the fact that it’s a little unusual for the military to blast multiple high-altitude objects out of the sky in the course of a few days, and perhaps just as unusual for there to be so little information about what’s happening. The Pentagon has said it believes the object President Biden ordered shot down off the Atlantic coast earlier this month was a Chinese surveillance balloon, and though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Sunday that intelligence has indicated the other objects are also balloons, there hasn’t been any confirmation these were from China — or anywhere else in particular.
Kirby did, however, highlight the extent of China’s surveillance balloon program while speaking to the press on Monday. “We were able to determine that China has a high altitude balloon program for intelligence collection that’s connected to the People’s Liberation Army,” he said. “It was operating during the previous administration but they did not detect it. We detected it. We tracked it, and we have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can.”