In a move that has sent ripples of mild amusement through Whitehall and provoked a collective shrug from the nation’s pub-going populace, the United States government has seen fit to declassify four pristine videos of unidentified flying objects. The footage, released with the solemn gravitas of a state funeral, shows what appears to be a collection of glowing orbs, tumbling cylinders, and other shapes that look suspiciously like the aftermath of a particularly aggressive children's party. British intelligence, bless their cotton socks, has dutifully declared they are “monitoring for security risks,” a phrase that in practice means some poor junior analyst in a windowless office in Cheltenham is now tasked with watching these videos on repeat, perhaps while muttering about the glory days of codebreaking.
Let us be clear about what we are dealing with. These are not aliens. These are not even particularly convincing special effects. One of the objects appears to be a triangle, which is the geometric equivalent of a plain custard cream in a world of Jaffa Cakes. The Yanks have gone to the trouble of declassifying this, marking it as official, and the best they can offer is a shape a five-year-old could draw with a protractor. Meanwhile, the other videos show objects that move in ways that defy known physics, which is code for “we have absolutely no idea what this is, but by God we’ll make a press release about it.” The footage is grainy, the colours are murky, and the whole affair has the distinct whiff of a government trying to distract us from something far more mundane, like a procurement scandal or a lost nuclear warhead.
Of course, the usual suspects are already sharpening their tinfoil hats and preparing to send strongly worded letters to the BBC. But let us not get carried away. If these truly were extraterrestrial craft, do you honestly think the Americans would release them on a Tuesday afternoon, buried under a press release written in the most soporific bureaucratese imaginable? No, if the aliens were here, we would know about it. There would be a Netflix series, a podcast hosted by a former X-Files writer, and at least three different conspiracy theories involving the Royal Family. The fact that the official release has all the excitement of a spreadsheet from the Department for Work and Pensions suggests that these videos have been sitting in a filing cabinet since the Clinton administration, and someone finally remembered to digitise them.
But what of British intelligence? Have they, in their infinite wisdom, discovered a threat to these sceptred isles from the little green men? The official line is that they are “assessing any potential security implications,” which is the intelligence community’s way of saying they have absolutely no idea and are hoping it all goes away. One imagines the meeting: a room full of people in sensible glasses and bad suits, staring at a screen showing a blurry orb, nodding sagely, and then deciding to do nothing because the only thing scarier than aliens is having to write a report about them. And let us be honest, if the Chinese or Russians have developed a craft that can do loop-the-loops at 20,000 feet, they are not going to announce it with a YouTube upload. They are going to use it, presumably to spy on our bins or interfere with our ability to make a decent cup of tea.
In the end, this is a story about the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of modern governance. The Americans have declassified UFO videos because they can, and because someone somewhere decided it would make them look transparent. The British are monitoring for security risks because that is what they are paid to do, and because the alternative is to admit they have been ignoring the sky for decades. And the rest of us are left to wonder: if this is all they have after seventy years of secrecy, perhaps the truth is not out there. Perhaps the truth is right here, in the tedious, bureaucratic, soul-crushing reality of a world where even the paranormal requires a memo and a risk assessment. So pour yourself a gin, dear reader, and watch the lights. They are probably just Venus, or a weather balloon, or a Chinese lantern from a party in Slough. But they are certainly not worth the fuss.
