Prediction #1: We'll find out the US government knew more than it was telling us.
Prediction #2: The US government will still know more than it's telling us.
No, those aren't particularly daring predictions. The first one is the only reason for there to be a report, and the second should be obvious since the US Senate will receive the report, while the rest of us will receive a redacted version of that report.
So, those are the predictions. Here are the speculations:
I've never seen a "UFO" (unless, perhaps, I was taken up into one for anal probe and memory erasure).
Or, rather, I've seen flying objects I couldn't readily identify, but never one that gave me the impression that the reason I couldn't identify it was that it wouldn't have been identifiable to someone with real interest in aircraft types, models, etc.*
I've done enough reading and cursory amateur research, though, to conclude that UFOs are real, that they aren't solely explicable as natural Earth phenomena (e.g. "swamp gas") and that they are probably not just advanced, experimental, or secret aircraft deployed without acknowledgement by earth governments, etc. In other words, I'm convinced that Earth has been, and continues to be, visited, by extraterrestrial beings.
What are they up to? Well, if they just wanted to conquer us or kill us off, I expect that they could ... and that they already would have.
So, something else. Maybe the whole "waiting for them to prove themselves competent to join the Galactic Federation, or to prove themselves so dangerous that we have no choice but to turn their rock into a smoking, lifeless cinder."
I'm somewhat fond of the whole set of "ancient astronauts" hypotheses (none of them are, at present, testable enough to call theories).
Maybe the aliens actually created "modern man," either accidentally or by way of intentionally evolving a previous species to a slightly higher level of intelligence to make us better slave laborers in primitive mines or something, then abandoned us for one reason or another but still keep an eye on us. But all that is hypothesis, aka speculation.
Maybe the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was psilocybin or ayahuasca or something, and that was what sparked our species divergence into "sapience," causing the aliens to leave.
And whatnot. All that's fun but I wouldn't bet money on any of it if I knew the answers were coming soon and money would change hands.
Here's another piece of speculation, though. I think there are two possibilities:
- Either the aliens are the equivalent of modern anthropologists spying on primitive isolated tribes and trying (not always successfully) to avoid notice; or
- The aliens have in fact -- probably at least as long ago as the 1940s -- established contact with Earth's nuclear/spacefaring regimes, and laid down some edicts (one obvious guess is "the next use of nuclear weapons will result in something you don't like;" another one is "OK, you've put a man on your moon; that's as far as you get to send manned spacecraft for now -- fuck around in low orbit all you like, but no further until we tell you").
I'd expect the latter, if true, to remain under cover of Prediction #2 above, for now at least.
So, how about your predictions and speculations? That's what comments are for, and I'll be interested to read them.
* I did see a B-2 bomber flying over the mountains in California, perhaps out of China Lake or Area 51 or somewhere, at a time when it was still technically classified. But "artist's concept" drawings of it had leaked some time earlier, so I and several people knew immediately what we were looking at. Otherwise, we might have classified it as a "UFO," even though it flew in a fixed-wing-aircraft manner rather than darting back and forth, standing still in mid-air, etc.
