Michael

In his farewell address, Eisenhower famously warned about the dangers of a “military-industrial complex”, but he also inveighed against the dangers of public policy captive to a “scientific-technological elite”. I never understood what that meant or why he conjoined those two seemingly distinct complexes. But now I see that his framework maps perfectly onto UFO disclosure. If extraordinary claims are locked inside national security secrecy, then science cannot operate, because evidence filtered through classification, compartmentalization, and hierarchical power structures is irrevocably contaminated. But the equal and opposite danger is that the subject gets handed over to a priesthood of insiders, intelligence officials, defense contractors, approved experts, and self-appointed interpreters of reality, all claiming privileged access to truths the public dare not be allowed to examine. That is the equilibrium we may be about to enter: too much secrecy for science, too much authority for intermediaries, and too little trust and evidence for everyone else. Eisenhower would have found the structure depressingly familiar.