Sunday Story: The UAP Series Part 1 - There's things flying around up there, y'know.

We’re finally doing it. A series on UAP. We know how it probably feels to be one of our followers - we are a leadership firm, and you see us post stuff that generally focuses on supporting leaders like you navigate big changes and disruptions. And then once in a while, we post something about…UFOs, and that probably makes some of you go “Hmmm?”.

There’s a reason we are posting this content, folks. UAP - Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon - have the potential to be a very big change and disruption for all of us, and since we are here to help leaders like you prepare for changes like this, we simply have to devote some of our time to this issue - and we're not the only ones. This is now a serious issue, serious enough for the United States Congress to be hosting not one, but two hearings on the matter - one on November 13th in the House, and one on the 19th in the Senate (as well as a bunch of other information). We have some clues about who will be testifying, likely building on oath-sworn whistleblower testimony from last year, but what matters here is that regardless of the explanation for this issue, it stands to be highly disruptive. We know that claims of non-human crash retrievals sounds ridiculous to most readers - after all, we’ve spent our entire lives believing that such a claim simply must be nonsense. But are they? Maybe not.

Candidly, we don’t know what’s going on, but our work on this topic makes it is clear that there’s something going on, and we’re here to help make sense of it for leaders like you. We’ve just updated our briefing note to get you caught up on this issue, and it seems a lot of people are interested - we’ve had over 20,000 people view it since we originally published the first version earlier this year, and our prior pieces on the UAP issue are by far and away our most popular content. But, not too many people comment or engage on this stuff compared to our usual work - and that makes sense, because as professionals, taking a position that “UFOs are a thing and we should probably be talking about it” comes with strong feelings of risk — what if you folks read our stuff and think we’ve lost our minds?

We promise you we haven’t. We are committed to helping you prepare for disruption, and we believe that this issue is absolutely disruptive - and you don’t have to believe the “Truth is Out There” about little green men and flying saucers for what we’re saying to be true; even if this is all explained by a run-of-the-mill political scandal, it’s still going to have ripple effects through western society, and that’s what this series is about. We’re going to unpack this entire issue over the next few Sunday Stories to try and help you understand how and why we’ve reached the evidence-based conclusion we have - and what you as a leader can do about it to prepare.

This week, we’re going to start with a very brief story: How we got into this. In future weeks, we’ll share more about how our journey has taken us to engage with a remarkable list of characters spanning intelligence, politics, business, and more as we’ve collaborated around the world to get more information and move this forward. But for now, we’ll start at the beginning.

I grew up in a family that loved reading - my dad was a big Science Fiction fan, so some of the first books I read was the works of authors like Heinlein and Niven. Like most children of the 1980s, I was also a big fan of Star Trek, Star Wars, and for a time I even used to wake up at 5 AM to watch the original Lost in Space before breakfast, enjoying the adventures of the Robinson family as they explored the cosmos together (and never understanding why they didn’t just leave Smith behind until I realized the answer was “because it makes for good TV”). Of course, this interest in these topics meant that I spent a ton of time wondering - and subsequently reading as much as I could - about whether or not it was possible for a flying saucer or alien species to visit earth.

What I learned was in short: No, it probably wasn’t probable or possible for non-human species to visit us in a flying saucer, even if they do exist somewhere else. No doubt most of you share this belief (the polls say most of you d0), so let’s take a look at where it comes from at least on the scientific side of things. Two concepts in science lead us to believe that while life could be out there, it likely wouldn't be visiting us: The Fermi Paradox, and the Drake Equation. These concepts are closely tied together, so let’s start with the Drake equation. In the 1960s, an astrophysicist named Frank Drake came up with a calculation to estimate how many beings “like us” would exist in the universe. Obviously, he had to make a whole bunch of assumptions to make his equation work, but the assumptions were logical and sound. Essentially, his math showed that if you look at the number of stars in our galaxy, how many of them could be like ours (life-supporting), how many planets were likely to exist around these stars, then how many of those planets actually develop life, followed by how much of that life developed intelligence like ours, and how long those intelligent beings would take to develop communications, and finally how long they’d have that ability for, you can get an estimate on how likely it is for ET to be real - in other words, you get a sense of how many civilizations “like ours” exist. Drake was pretty clear to say that it’s not necessarily likely or unlikely; but it’s plausible - the math makes sense that they'd be out there. We just need to know a lot more information before we can calculate probability, but in most assumptions, the Drake Equation makes the case that we're probably not alone - so where are they?

A couple of decades before Drake’s Equation, one of the smartest guys who ever lived - Enrico Fermi - posited his paradox in what may be an apocryphal story from a kitchen and break room at the Los Almost National Labs, following his work related to the Manhattan Project. The group was discussing a recent flap of UFO sightings (more on that in an another part of this series) and Fermi famously asked “Where is everybody?”. Statistically speaking, the universe must be full of life given the sheer number of planets and stars - so where were they all?

At it’s core, Fermi’s paradox is this: Either life is incredibly rare, or it’s impossible for life from one planet to meet life from another planet because the distances between star systems are too vast to traverse. Otherwise, we’d be seeing them all the time.

In short: We know that mathematically there should be tons of life bearing planets out there, but since Fermi and Drake weren’t seeing any proof of UFOs, it must mean that it’s impossible for them to get here. If you are currently holding the belief that “Aliens exist, but they aren’t visiting earth”, these incredibly intelligent scientists are the reasons you think that, as their work largely serves as the foundation for much of the "pop science" consensus that travelling between stars is the realm of science fiction, not reality.

So let's go back to that Christmas of 2017 when I encountered that New York Times article. My thinking at that time was "UFOs are nonsense" - I knew about Fermi and Drake, as well as all the other reasons why that position was the "correct" one. I will often joke that I was basically raised by Daniel Jackson, Jack O’Neill (Two L’s), Sam Carter, and Teal’c from the TV show Stargate SG-1, as my father and I would watch it every Friday and have robust discussions about race, politics, rights, equity, peace, conflict, religion, and more - all themes that were prevalent in that show, but easier to discuss in the context of the species of the show like the Asgard or the Reetu than it was in the context of real human crises we see in the headlines each day. I grew up generally being well informed about science and technology because of these interests, and I knew full well that UFOs were firmly the topic of fantasy and fiction; our best scientists said faster than light travel was impossible, after all!

But in mid December, The New York Times published “Glowing Auras and Black Money: Inside the Pentagon’s mysterious UFO Program”. This article was interesting for two reasons. First, it featured a story by a man named Luis Elizondo who claimed to have worked on a secret UFO program for the US Government; I found this interesting because the US Government had looked into UFOs in the past - via the very public Project Blue Book - and shut it down in 1969 because they had concluded the UFO topic was a bunch of malarky, which is perfectly in line with Drake and Fermi. So why, then, was the US Government spending such a hefty sum of money studying them in secret well into the 21st century?

The second compelling element in this article was the existence of videos that showed pilots observing objects that were moving at incredible speeds. There are three videos of note - the Go Fast, the Gimbal and the FLIR, and they are below for you to watch if you choose.

The videos were remarkable. They showed objects without wings or a visible means of propulsion moving at speeds that shocked the pilots - some of the most experienced and best in the world. These objects could hover, turn rapidly, and jet off in high speeds that our vehicles cannot match. And these are real objects - they were captured on video, seen by witnesses, and importantly: recorded on radar and sensors from multiple different military platforms that confirm what the video and pilots saw is true - real, physical objects were engaging in these incredible maneuvers. For an overview of some of the details of the 2004 USS Nimitz Incident - where one of the videos is from - check out this Global News story.

When I read the New York Times article in 2017, I felt much the way you might feel right now if you've just seen those videos for the first time - I didn’t know what to make of it. So, I filed it away in the back of my mind and…moved on. I had other concerns at that time - building this business, doing my work in higher education, and doing my best to be a good husband and friend in my social life.

Then in 2020, another news story brought the 2017 article back into focus for me: the news story shared that Department of Defense (the Navy, specifically) issued a press release confirming that the Go Fast, Gimbal and FLIR videos were indeed real, authentic US Navy videos, and that they didn’t know what they were.

That got my attention in a big way, so I started following this topic a bit more closely looking our for more news but stopping short of active research. When Barack Obama went on James Corden and said “There is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are. We can’t explain how they move; their trajectory - they do not have an easily explainable pattern” that changed - active research seemed necessary. I don’t know about you, but when Barack Obama says “UFOs are real” I think it’s kind of important.

That’s what it took for us to do a deep dive into this subject, and along with a community of dedicated cross-disciplinary researchers from all around the world, we've got a fairly good idea that this disruptor is potentially huge. There are only 4 possible explanations for this phenomena:

1) The American Government, or a NATO-aligned ally, has discovered a new form of technology that makes our fastest and most powerful jets and rockets look obsolete.

2) The Chinese, Russian, or another NATO adversary has discovered a new form of technology that makes our fastest and most powerful jets and rockets obsolete.

3) It's someone (or something) else's advanced technology that makes our fastest and most powerful jest and rockets obsolete.

What is not in dispute is that there are things flying around up there, and the people who are supposed to know what those are are claiming to have no idea what they are (people like White House Defense Communications Guru John Kirby, former director of the NSA Admiral Michael Mike Rogers, and I already linked Barack Obama above - but there are countless others).

There are some who argue that this is all just a hoax, so we'll call that hypothesis 4) - perhaps the entire issue has been fabricated simply to funnel money into elements in the DOD that are engaged in corrupt behaviours. This would mean the largest and most powerful military machine in the history of mankind has gone rogue and contravened a whole bunch of laws, which in itself is significantly disruptive - this level of corruption makes Watergate look like the equivalent of a non-profit employee forgetting to report a vendor gift worth more than the IRS limits, especially in the context of the DOD having never passed an audit and being unable to account for most of how it spends taxpayer dollars.

In the era of rapid change, it's easy to look at $8 eggs and $10 dollar milk, the headlines about existential threats like climate change and global warfare, and the general state of many of our democracies, and wonder "why should I care about something as unconventional as UAP?" Next week, we’ll explore exactly why this matters for every leader preparing for disruption. Until then, consider this: these objects are real, and they are performing in ways that defy known physics. The potential impact is monumental, and the choices made by leaders will shape what happens next. It also has a distinct human interest impact - let's say the most mundane explanation is the correct one (Hypothesis 4) - how is it going to feel for the people you lead to accept that billions of dollars that could have been spent on health care or education has been skimmed off the top by corrupt officials? Do you remember how the world reacted following other big scandals? In many cases, we've just moved on, but in other cases, entire generations have been defined in response to government mismanagement. If we look to the other hypothesis, the implications are even greater. We don't know what the impact will be, but this issue is priming us for a big disruption, and to reiterate, what is not in dispute is that there are objects flying around that we cannot explain.

That means you’ve got 7 days to come to terms with what might be a new fact for you: These objects are real, and they are performing in ways that defy our understanding of physics. We cannot, as far as we know, build objects that move the way these objects move. The implications of this are huge, and leaders absolutely need to be talking about this issue, because leadership is what will make the difference on how this rolls out over the next few years.

Even if it’s just secret technology cooked up in a Lockheed Martin lab, this is likely to have incredibly profound impacts on our society, and we promise we will explain how. If you want more in the meantime, dive into our updated Briefing Note for Average People, which is full of information and links to primary resources that can inform you more fully on this issue.

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next Sunday.