Janie Slaven: LEFT TO MY OWN DEVICES: Alien Invasions? Nope. All Clear.

Jan. 11—Some readers may recall the mind-bending news from Lincoln County, New Mexico, on July 8, 1947. Even if your tenure on earth doesn't go back 75-plus years to have experienced it, you might know I'm invoking the shocking front-page headline of the Roswell Daily Herald that read, "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region." For reference, "RAAF" does not stand for Really, Another Alien Fiasco?! Rather, that's the Roswell Army Air Field, a U.S. Department of Defense facility, that launched generations of believers, hunters, skeptics, and those simply alarmed at the prospect that (a) there exists life in the universe not earthly in being and (b) they found us ... in New Mexico, no less.

Like many, I'm in that group. Yes, that's an intentionally vague sentiment. As an ethicist and when I was lawyering, arguing both sides, or many, of any complex dispute such as whether there are or are not ALFs out there, or down here, naturally makes up my persona. I might posit one day that, "Of course. There must be some form of life out there. How conceited are we earthlings to believe that we're oh-so-special to be the only humanoid lifeforms ever conceived?" The next day you could hear me attest that, "Of course, there can be no true alien life form in the universe. Why would we not understand and know they exist by now with the sophisticated space technologies, the vast brain-trust of thousands of researchers and scholars focused on finding them, and the billions in public funding expended by numerous governments during the past 80 years?" It's unlikely that I'd ever venture into the hunter's camp if I'm frank, so I suppose I'm limited to pieces of the groups of UFO and alien interests and reactionaries.

Since Roswell, maybe beforehand, the U.S. Government has expended those resources toward trying to settle the debate. The public's interests waned almost immediately, and the Roswell incident became just another one amidst the cadre of sci-fi-turned-quasi-believable phenomena of the time. Of course, film, radio, and to a lesser degree television audiences eagerly took in the tall tales during the era, and the moon landing—which did happen, you kooks—amped up even further the yen to believe. No matter the public's fleeting focus on Roswell, the government was all in.

In the late 1970s the subject reemerged. Storied ufologist (it's a word, and a discipline ... go figure) Stanton Friedman interviewed the one remaining RAAF personnel with firsthand knowledge of the incident. Some years later HBO adapted the resulting book, "The Roswell Incident," which gave the subject mass attention again. Meantime, defense agencies continued their research and investigations under the guise, at the least, of maintaining national security. I'm unwilling to spend days or weeks examining the records of the National Archives and Records Administration, assuming Joe Lunchbucket can even access the more viable documentation, to carefully lay out how your tax dollars have gone into these efforts. Although, things seemed to have picked up in the public eye early into the 2000s.

In 2007, then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) helped stand up the secretive Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program. Word is, after around five years and a scant $22 million, the AAWSAP ostensibly shut down. Also, it had since become known by its insiders more formally as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Introducing "threat" to its organizational label seems apt, though we can see how, maybe, at its outset that would have been too direct. We in the public learned about AATIP long after its purported disbandment when the government published news about it in 2017. Its top official, Luis Elizondo, resigned in 2017 with great frustration that the program uprooted evidence that we are not, in fact, alone and because Defense was not taking its work seriously.

Upon Elizondo's resignation being made public, the question of AATIP's status was, and still is, fuzzy at best. Fast forward to 2020 during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing when we learned that an unclassified, but generally unknown, agency existed that, functionally, was AATIP's successor: the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force. Now, we're talking. No opaque labels there. "UAP" was front-and-center in its name. Government officials, years ago, adopted UAP as the modern way to discuss UFOs. The latter designation is left to Hollywood and the like these days. More recently, the current iteration of public funds being used to study these things has been reinvented again.

Currently, the Secretary of Defense oversees the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which is charged with investigating UAPs. Last July, Defense announced that the AARO would take over the mission and functions of the AATIP. If you're confounded by the alphabet soup, you are not alone, though you should expect nothing less from government agency organizations. I've not even broached the related agencies that've popped up while researching this piece: USD(I&S); AOIMSG; the AOIMEXEC; or the pieces of AARO, such as AAROEXEC. If Calgon is still a thing, you might be pining for it to "take you away" trying to digest and sort it all.

Recall throughout all of this that we're talking about your money being spent on these endeavors. Also, the point of my bringing them into this column surrounds the security implications. If you think that your internet usage and all its privacy implications and data security woes are at risk because of the central casting, basement-dwelling, Mountain Dew-slurping teen angst-hacker, what might beings capable of inter-stellar travel be capable of, related?

Rest easy, though. Last month the AARO convened a meeting with the media. Defense officials resolutely claimed that "We have not seen anything that would ... lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin...." Phew! All clear. We have enough to worry about, eh?

Ed Zuger is a professor of cybersecurity, an attorney, and a trained ethicist. Reach him at edzugeresq@gmail.com