From Curiosity to Condescension: What the Drone Coverage Reveals About What's Coming Next
The strategic return of UFO stigma
The news stories punctuating the lull in drone sightings coverage have an emerging common theme—ridicule. Headlines with phrases like “drone hysteria,” “conspiracy theory delirium,” and “great drone freak-out” signal an abrupt shift from serious investigation to dismissive shaming, which is yet another indication that we are experiencing a carefully orchestrated psychological operation in real time. For many in the UFO field, this condescending tone is reminiscent of the long-standing stigma many thought was finally receding.
What does this shift in media coverage tell us about the operation’s goals and what might come next?
Are we on the verge of revelation or deeper manipulation?
The Emerging Drone Derision
Perhaps the most obnoxious and condescending example of public shaming comes from the on-screen rant of CBS News Miami's Jim Berry. In a two-minute segment called, “Is the hysteria over drones warranted? Absolutely not,” Berry manages to call into question what people are seeing, dismiss recent legislation attempts, and suggest that people questioning the drones as being aliens or spies are essentially stupid.
He says, “In the night sky, our eyes can play tricks on us. A UFO or UAP, as they are now called, could simply be a plane or maybe even a constellation. But some of us won’t accept simple explanations.”
An opinion post in the New York Times echoed this sentiment, stating, “Many Americans simply don’t like a mundane answer,” suggesting again that people are misidentifying lights in the sky or just unfamiliar with drone technology and heightened air traffic.
The author, Alex Kingsbury, makes no mention of what made those sightings mysterious and anomalous, suggesting instead that the current “societal panic” is unfounded. To him, government explanations and assurances should be accepted at face value. To do otherwise is to join the ranks of dreaded, delusional, and “unwitting” conspiracy theorists.
He not-so-subtly lumps UFO-believers into that category. Kingsbury references the Pentagon’s 2023 report on UAP encounters, quoting, “all investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification.” Ignoring the “most” part of that finding and subsequent congressional hearings with credible whistleblower testimony, Kingsbury seems incredulous that 63% of Americans still believe the “U.S. government knows more than it is telling the public about U.F.O.s,” per a recent poll.
When I ran the Times piece through Claude AI, it returned the following as the intended emotional response:
Readers should feel somewhat embarrassed about entertaining conspiracy theories
A sense that they're more sophisticated if they accept the mundane explanations
Mild condescension toward those who question official narratives
Reassurance that everything has a simple explanation
Primes people to view future concerns as irrational hysteria
The implication in what is essentially more liberal elitism and pro-establishment propaganda from the New York Times is that skepticism is irrational while deference to authorities (so long as they aren’t Republican) is where truth is found. It is “Trust the Science” in disguise and a replay of “swamp gas” and weather balloons.
In the words of then-Congressman Gerald Ford, “Are we to assume that everyone who says he has seen UFOs is an unreliable witness?”
Apparently yes.
Ridicule as a Form of Control
When authorities and mainstream media pivot to shame and ridicule, it is usually deliberate. This approach serves as a powerful tool for controlling narrative and behavior—more effective, in many ways, than direct censorship or official denial.
By making people fear social ostracism for engaging with a topic seriously, it creates psychological pressure for conformity and drives meaningful discussion to the fringes while maintaining plausible deniability about suppressing discourse. People become afraid of being weird.
What makes the current situation particularly noteworthy is its paradoxical nature. Even as media figures mock “drone hysteria,” officials are authorizing expanded no-fly zones and pursuing legislation granting broad new authorities.
We are asked to dismiss current drone sightings as completely benign while fearing what drone sightings could mean in the future.
New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, among others, stated unequivocally that there is no public safety threat but that he supports legislation to address America’s vulnerabilities to drone attacks. We see the same from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
This cognitive dissonance where drones are both nothing and potentially something appears crafted to create a state of confusion and psychological suspension where multiple, even contradictory, scenarios remain possible. Lost from public memory is the statement from Rep. Jim Hines that the large drones, exhibiting advanced technology, are “federal government operations.” That might also be deliberate, as few media outlets highlighted that important admission.
Clearly, drones can serve nefarious purposes. But the timing of all this and how we are being guided into legislative “solutions” that expand authorities and increase control merits close examination and scrutiny—the kind of scrutiny the media apparently wants to discourage us from.
Drones as Disclosure
What has the drone debacle accomplished? Setting aside what they are, whose they are, where they are coming from, and what they are doing, the ongoing events have oriented people to looking skyward, acclimated people to unknown objects in the sky, and got people thinking and talking about non-human intelligence (NHI). Those are precisely the kinds of things that would support a progressive disclosure process.
It has also established a complicated relationship with authority. On the one hand, a recent poll found that 78% of Americans believe the government knows more than it is publicly sharing about the drones. We are clearly facing a trust deficit, yet the way the situation has been managed builds public demand for official answers.
We are seeking answers from a government we don’t trust.
When we consider that the government has been hiding the truth that we are not alone for several decades, this psychological dependence on authority is needed to preserve narrative control. They are conditioning us to compartmentalize their lack of transparency from our need for explanation. That is the psyop.
How do you maintain control amidst failing faith in authority?
What the New York Times and other pieces seem to indicate is that they want to shame us into submission. Like a dog on a leash, we are allowed to sniff the bushes but yanked back if we stray too far or get too close to the truth. The giving of rope offers an illusion of freedom, specifically of an independent press, but all moves are calculated and all responses are fed back into the psyop machine.
The subliminal message is the same it has always been—obey.
They know they cannot stop disclosure, but they are doing everything they can to have it on their terms.
What Comes Next
When something big plays out it is never about just one thing. The drone situation serves many masters. It is preparation for controlled disclosure. It is justification for expanded authorities that could exacerbate asymmetrical power between the people and the state. It could also serve as a warning for real or faked aerial invasions—from terrorists, foreign adversaries, or NHI. What we are seeing is a flexible narrative strategy that can be leveraged for a number of possible scenarios.
The current pattern of events suggests several possible trajectories, including:
Strategic Crisis: The ridicule phase could be setting up revelation of legitimate drone threats, like the nuclear or bioweapon scares previously deemed false. Training the public to dismiss concerns creates optimal conditions for a shock that drives acceptance of new restrictions.
Progressive Revelation: The push-pull between acknowledgment and denial could be preparing us for partial disclosure of advanced technology or NHI. By first discrediting witnesses and priming public doubt, authorities position themselves as the sole credible interpreters of anomalous events.
False Flag Operation: This could be groundwork for an entirely manufactured crisis. The contradictory messaging about drones being both harmless and threatening sets conditions for staged incidents designed to expand government control.
Field Testing: The drone activity itself may be a demonstration program testing advanced technologies and public reaction simultaneously. Media ridicule provides cover - allowing authorities to gauge responses while maintaining deniability by discrediting witnesses who see too much.
These scenarios aren’t mutually exclusive. The psychological groundwork being laid could support multiple outcomes, which is precisely what makes the current operation so sophisticated. The key is recognizing that dramatic shifts in official messaging rarely happen by accident—they are usually prelude to something bigger.
In this lull is actually an acceleration and amplification. Bringing shame into the game, paired with urgent calls for more state power, likely represents the approach of a pivotal moment. The key question becomes not whether something significant is being prepared (it is), but how to maintain critical awareness while these psychological operations unfold.
Who or what is the real threat?
As this situation develops, we would do well to remember that ridicule often precedes revelation—and that the most effective psychological operations work by making people feel foolish for paying attention to exactly what they should be watching most closely.
Read the drone series here!
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Carolyn Brouillard is Managing Partner of ExoFuturesConsulting, which partners with forward-thinking organizations ready to explore the profound implications of contact with NHI.
Another excellent piece on this topic! Thanks, Carolyn!
"Are we on the verge of revelation or deeper manipulation?"
Perhaps we're on the verge of revelation OF deeper manipulation.
My ex-wife and son, both in NJ, have both reported to me incidents of UAPs shooting down other UAPs. For what it's worth, this was precisely predicted by Clif High a short time ago as part of a government psy-op.
I'm hoping that the idea that the government is withholding information from the public is now accepted as just good common sense. The Warren Commission, the assessment of the war effort in Vietnam, the NIST report on 9/11, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and most recently, safe and effective(!). Remember the Maine!
Interesting report from James Corbett on this topic.
https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/how-to-fake-an-alien-invasion-2015?publication_id=725827&post_id=153516785&r=eyk5u&triedRedirect=true
This makes more sense than the default response of "it's a PsyOp" with zero explanation as to the goals of said "PsyOp". It is a lazy way of saying "I don't know".