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United States News Politics

Marco Rubio Hopes UFOs Are Aliens, Not Chinese Planes (vice.com) 144

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio said he hopes that UFOs are extraterrestrials and not advanced Chinese aircraft. From a report: In a July 16 interview with CBS reporter Jim DeFede about a range of topics, including the government's Covid-19 response and the possible existence of extraterrestrial life. "We have things flying over our military bases and places where we're conducting military exercises and we don't know what it is and it isn't ours," Rubio said. "Frankly, if it's something outside this planet that might actually be better than the fact that we've seen some sort of technological leap from the Chinese or Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity," Rubio said. "That to me is a national security risk and one we should be looking into."
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Marco Rubio Hopes UFOs Are Aliens, Not Chinese Planes More

Marco Rubio Hopes UFOs Are Aliens, Not Chinese Planes

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  • Military industrial complex (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... needs more dollars. All the dollars.

  • Don't they scamble jets to intercept? (Score:5, Funny)

    by I'mjusthere ( 6916492 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @03:44PM (#60312043)
    Shoot one down and see what happens.

    If it's a Chinese or Russian plane, all we may have is a war.

    On the other hand if it extraterrestrial,we'll be all rounded up and eaten .

    • Re:Don't they scamble jets to intercept? (Score:4, Funny)

      by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @04:02PM (#60312121)

      On the other hand if it extraterrestrial,we'll be all rounded up and eaten .

      SPOILER: "To Serve Man" is a cookbook!

    • With what? Most observations involve objects apparently capable of moving far faster than any bullet or missile in our arsenal.

      Besides which, it's usually a bad idea to pick a fight with a technologically superior adversary. Just look what happened to the Americans - something like a 99% death rate before the last of the survivors were shoved into the most undesirable pockets of land on the continent.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        it's usually a bad idea to pick a fight with a technologically superior adversary.

        Some 'Nam pilots claimed they shot missiles at "them" without any discernible outcome. However, it may not be a good idea to keep testing our luck.

        For they may just be in a bad mood one day and unleash a virus that .... waiddaminute

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          "For they may just be in a bad mood one day and unleash a virus that .... waiddaminute"

          Wait... so you are saying you do think it's the chinese.

        • For they may just be in a bad mood one day and unleash a virus that .... waiddaminute

          that raises the death rate by 3% or so? Yeah, I know I'd be terrified if I knew that aliens were attacking using something that would shorten my life by a week or so....

          • Where are you getting a week from? 3% of an average human life span is 2.4 years

            Alternately, a 3% annual risk of death give you less than 50% chance of living for 23 year - and current evidence suggests that COVID immunity is short lived, so you'll potentially be catching it again every year.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Calydor ( 739835 )

        Wide-target EMP. Aim at the sky and let rip when one of these things is detected then see what happens.

        • I can tell you what happens - all the sensors in the area go dead, along with all other electronics, and the jet that launched the weapon falls out of the sky.

          Maybe something happens to the UFO, but we're in a poor place to notice it, much less respond.

      • And nobody hears a massive sonic boom and thermal signature? That is strange.

        • It does suggest that either they're a purely visual phenomenon, or that they're dramatically advanced technology. We've started building experimental supersonic aircraft that dramatically reduce the sonic boom, so we know it's possible. And if they are aircraft, their design strongly suggests they're not based on the same aerodynamic limitations ours are. Once you get into non-contact force fields, etc., moving the air out of your way (and putting it back again behind you) would be a trivial exercise, eve

          • Those things are all science fiction right now. The Chinese don't have any of that.
            The US needs enemies, and is running out of them.

            The Middle East as a threat has finished.
            Russia is out of favour, for strange reasons.
            China is about the only potential threat left, and the Republican party are desperately trying to make them into the next enemy, but read the article. It sounds like Marco Rubio has taken up daytime drinking.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mbkennel ( 97636 )

              Chinese technology is improving extremely rapidly and unlike the USSR (and unlike USA today) they have the manufacturing capability and electronics to make it real and successful.

              • True, but they're a long way away from anything like that.
                China is also not interested in a war against the US.

            • >The Chinese don't have any of that.
              Which would strongly suggest that whatever they are, they're not Chinese...

              • It would strongly suggest that Marco Rubio made it up.
                Is he standing for re-election soon? Why yes, yes he is.

                • Obviously not, unless he controlled of a vast conspiracy involving everyone from back-country hicks to respected Airforce officers, pilots, and astronauts, stretching back before he was born.

                  Something is out there - maybe just an unexplained visual phenomena, maybe something more. Rubio taking a position on it for his own ends is completely irrelevant to the phenomena itself.

                  • Something is out there

                    Na. That conclusion doesn't follow.
                    18% of Americans are certain they have seen a ghost.
                    That is interestingly very close to the amount of people who have seen UFOs- ~17%.

                    There's a simpler answer: There's something *in* there. As in, their heads. Or are you telling me you believe ghosts must exist because lots of people are sure they've seen them?

          • Speaking of visual technology, we have a laser pointer that we use to entertain our masters, that is our cats. And of course the dot of light can move fast--in principle, it could move faster than the speed of light. A bright enough light source could reflect off of water, and appear to move very fast.

            • Somewhat more difficult to get it to bounce off the atmosphere in a way that appears to be a solid object - and the overwhelming majority of UFOs are seen from below, not from above over water.

          • the leak is probably intentional, from the Navy, and intended for the Chinese. Strange phenomena that happen to be visible near Navy training grounds?

            They are probably laser or other direct-energy induced plasma flares/blooms. The pilots saw the consequence of a test from another aircraft, ship or ground station. It was probably a much earlier version of the technology. They may have been in on the existence of the test or not.

            The technological goal is a frequency tunable flare that is a decoy for missi

      • Considering Marco Rubio made that stuff up, I don't think it's really a problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by barakn ( 641218 )

        Most observations involve objects apparently capable of moving far faster than any bullet or missile in our arsenal..

        ...or they involve parallax with ordinary objects. You did your due diligence and ruled out parallax, right? Wait, you didn't?

        • A few have been tracked on radar, which doesn't suffer from parallax effects...

          • But instead suffer from dozens of known scenarios that produce anomalous artifacts.

            I mean, the proposal here is that alien craft are so fucking advanced that they can essentially travel through atmosphere at speeds that would cause nuclear fucking ignition of the oxygen molecules, but are still perfectly opaque to radar?

            Come on. You're not even trying to find a reasonable answer.

            • Yeah, but radar and vision suffer from different kinds of artifacts - to spot something with both simultaneously makes it far more likely that an actual physical phenomena is being detected. Now, my money is on many/most spottings being parallax or other confusion, and at least most of the rest being sort of atmospheric phenomena "ghost" rather than solid objects, but the fact that the military has continued investigating this sort of thing for decades now suggests that at least occasionally whatever it is

    • No one goes to war over getting one of their planes shot down over enemy territory. Every one knows the drill. Every one spies. Spies get executed or traded. The machine continues to hum along.

  • Chinese vs. aliens (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @03:45PM (#60312053)

    Aliens are more likely to want to eat us, whereas the Chinese just want to steal our data.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @03:46PM (#60312057)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Why would he hope for either? If they are Aliens hes completely ignorant to the current fact that black people in america have spent hundreds of years fighting persecution just for their skin colour. We cant even comfortably interact with someone from a different political spectrum, let alone a different galaxy. The idea that somehow aliens would see us as anything but a horrifying tale of subjugation and misery is laughable.

      Don't assume that aliens would be some perfectly harmonious group to look down upon us. What is ethnically and morally "good" isn't really a matter of a constantly upward climb - it's often just a matter of what society currently chooses to validate. In 500 years homosexuality may be in the "wrong" camp again (it already went from acceptable in ancient times to not ok, and now back again). In 1000 years eating with a fork may be seen as barbaric.

      Technology progresses. Morality merely changes. They coul

      • If they are conquerors, and technologically advanced, then we're hosed regardless. They would probably just spray us down like bacteria on a toilet seat.

        • If they're advanced, they've evolved past the trivial concept of, "Kill'm all!!" That mentality hasn't ever served the humans well. They'd be here to help us, or to leave us alone (just passing by seeing what their is here).

      • "Don't assume that aliens would be some perfectly harmonious group to look down upon us." There was a scifi story some decades ago that was based on this idea. Aliens discovered the Earth, and recruited us for our negotiating prowess. Dumbfounded, Earthlings asked why, given all the wars we've been through. It turned out that very few species made it ten (earth-)years past the invention of the H-bomb; we (and a few other civilizations) did. They wanted us to help more species get past that bottleneck.

        N

      • Dark Ages for example. Lots of ancient tech got lost when the dark ages arrived. Archimedes' early calculus had to be reinvented many centuries later.

    • " If they are Aliens hes completely ignorant to the current fact that black people in america have spent hundreds of years fighting persecution just for their skin colour."

      They might be green aliens who do not understand why we discuss differences in beige skin color.

  • Every time Pentagon needs to hide (Score:4, Interesting)

    by guacamole ( 24270 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @03:54PM (#60312085)

    Every time Pentagon needs to conceal facts about some kind of new weapon they're developing, they supply just enough information to get a UFO gossip started. It always works.

    • A conspiracy theory that the government is purposefully generating conspiracy theories to hide the subject of your conspiracy theory. Is that a conspiracy inception?

  • Good news, bad news (Score:3, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @04:09PM (#60312151)

    The good news is that they are in fact aliens. They are friendly. They have come to bestow upon us gifts of free, clean energy, cures for all diseases, methods for growing unlimited food, and 6G wireless technology among other things.

    The bad news is that they are orange.

    • The good news is that they are in fact aliens. They are friendly. They have come to bestow upon us gifts of free, clean energy, cures for all diseases, methods for growing unlimited food, and 6G wireless technology among other things.

      The bad news is that they are orange.

      The only orange aliens that come to mind are Larry Niven's kzinti [wikipedia.org], who frequently have orange fur. They tend to go to war a lot. Fortunately they always strike too soon.

    • The joke is funny, dude, whether you are fer or agin' Trump.

    • I had no idea the Oompa Loompas were so advanced!

  • Hey Little Marco (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @04:12PM (#60312165)
    there's a pandemic going on and about 30 million people are about to get evicted, many of them in your state. The CIA & Military will take care of this, never mind your pretty little head. You have more important things to be working on.

    Seriously folks, in 7 days the last of the extra unemployment money runs out. That's half a trillion dollars in spending per month that goes *poof* from our economy. If you don't think that'll effect you then you're wrong. The economic collapse will make the Great Depression look like the .com boom. Call your representatives!
    • Then perhaps we should start up the economy again. Because if we keep things shut down, the businesses WILL go bankrupt, and there won't be any jobs for people to come back to.
      • because the parts that are closed are restaurants, schools, theme parks (Florida excepted because they're insane) and movie theaters. Places that guaranteed to be super spreaders and with the exception of schools non-essential. And we can work around the school problem if we spend enough money on remote education.

        As for companies going bankrupt, no, they won't. Not if we stop letting Trump & Co grift all the PPP funds for themselves and keep giving people that extra $600/week (which is about $17.50/
        • No, we have closed beaches and parks, too - where UV is plentiful and distancing is easy. We have schools closed, even though there are almost no deaths of school-age kids, and plenty of data showing they are not spreaders. Better to let companies crumble (and they will - your PPP funds have to be spent by the end of this month if you want it forgiven - and you can't use it for anything other than payroll and rent, no utilities or other leases) and keep people on the dole!

      • You can't force people to go shopping.

        Face it, America needs some serious cultural and economic reform. If we weren't so focused on infinite growth and leveraging every dollar we have, we would be in far better shape right now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        You seem to have missed the whole startup of the Economy again that happened a while back. Some have had to close again when COVID predictably resurged due to re-opening too soon. In other places, business is still light because people don't feel safe going out.

        What's your answer, go door to door and order people to go out to eat at gunpoint? What if after all of this they realized all that was just a drain on household finances and discovered that preparing a meal at home could be enjoyable family time?

        If

    • More rsilvergun math (Score:4, Informative)

      by SpankiMonki ( 3493987 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @06:22PM (#60312745)

      Seriously folks, in 7 days the last of the extra unemployment money runs out. That's half a trillion dollars in spending per month that goes *poof* from our economy.

      LOL, no. The federal unemployment benefit is $600 per month. In order for $500,000,000,000 in spending per month to go *poof*, there would have to be...wait for it...

      ...833,333,333 unemployed people in the US. 833 MILLION.

      That's more than 5 times the size of the US workforce, 2.5 times the entire US population, and tens of millions more than the entire workforce of China.

      Never could understand people who constantly exaggerate to such extreme levels. There's probably a word for it somewhere.

      • The benefit from the CARES act is $600 per week, not per month.

        If the expanded eligibility for contractors and gig workers expires this month too (not sure on that one) people might stand to be ineligible for the normal state unemployment funds as well. Currently I get nearly $4000/mo unemployment benefits - $2400/mo in federal funds from CARES and $1600/mo of funds from the state.

        • You're right. I stand corrected.

          So it's a little more than 200,000,000 that would have to be unemployed in the US for $0.5T/month in spending to go *poof* (if I've got the math right this time). Actual unemployment is about a tenth of that IIRC.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I made a rather stupid error in my earlier reply to you. My apologies.

  • I hope so too (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thaylin ( 555395 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @04:29PM (#60312245)

    If not it means all the trillions over what they spend was wasted more than I already think it is.

  • How cool that would be!
    UFO's make every conspiracy theory better.

  • or maybe post humans, as they have done a lot of genetic engineering for bigger brains. To see it look at the disparity in tech. How old is quantum mechanics, the electron microscope? 100 years? And yet we have traffic lights unaware of cars approaching. And the world problems? Deeply rooted in proliferation, people getting tech they do not understand. Solution? High tech is for those who can handle it, understand it only. Result? people with 200 IQs flying around in saucers we don't know exist.
    I think the

    • Yes, the "aliens" are actually humans abducted thousands of years ago and specially trained to help us out.

      One of them looks like actor Robert Lansing, and he takes on Teri Garr as a sidekick, who appears scatter-brained and ditzy, but is remarkably resourceful and a deeply patriotic American. For some strange reason, however, she is wary of Lansing's car.

  • I, for one, welcome our new non-Chinese alien overlords.

  • "Get used to disappointment"
  • the lizard-human hybrid.

  • How come not once in human history, somebody has been able to take a *clear* photograph of a UFO? All we get are lights, blobs, basic geometric shapes, and other crap like that.

    How come we never see markings, or vents, or any other distinguishable features of these alleged ships?

    • Because if you get a clear photo of it you can see that it's a weather balloon, passenger plane, surveillance drone, etc. You lose the "U" in "UFO."
  • Guy using simple math [youtube.com] to debunk the "gofast" video. It's much more fascinating to me than all the alien documentary rubbish.

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