Discourse Blog Asks: Is It Aliens?

*Technically* they're "unidentified" flying objects, but could they really be... y'know?

Photo by JENS KALAENE/dpa/AFP via Getty Images

Over the past week or so, the United States military has heroically blasted off to save our sovereign skies from a conspicuous uptick of aerial threats including — but not necessarily limited to — a purported Chinese spy balloon roughly the size of a football field, as well as a trio of smaller, “unidentified” objects that had floated into US and Canadian airspace in recent days.

Understandably, the repeated scrambling of fighter jets to address a series of high altitude incursions has prompted some serious questions from an anxious public worried that unseen powers may be meddling in our domestic affairs. Are these weather balloons? Spy satellites? Could they be….???

On Monday, the federal government attempted to put one of of these acute anxieties to rest. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured the nation that there’s “no indication of aliens or extra-terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” while National Security Council official John Kirby insisted during a press briefing, that there was no need to “worry about aliens.”

Ha ha ha nice try, guys! Now I am definitely worried about aliens. In fact, absent any definitive proof otherwise, the only thing giving me a moment’s hesitation that we’re not dealing with extraterrestrial life here is the fact that the U.S. actually shot them down at all. Imagine being part of some technologically advanced spacefaring alien race that shlepped all the way to Earth only to get murked by a chimp in an F-22. Shameful (or, perhaps not…). Kirby’s explanation that NORAD was only finding this stuff now because it had expanded its search parameters after the Chinese balloon ain’t cuttin’ it with me, either; sorry, but “we just weren’t really paying all that good attention before” is some weak fucking sauce. So aliens it is.

Wanting to confirm I wasn’t alone (in my theory, as well as in the universe at large) I asked my Discourse Blog coworkers whether they thought it was aliens, too. Here’s what they had to say: