It's a conspiracy theory that exalts the government/military and a narrative that they control. Why wouldn't you want skeptical populations thinking that they can trust you, that you're skilled and competent, and for whom you can use slight of hand to easily influence and distract?

US adversaries can easily turn their drones into a panic when they fly in US airspace, and I believe that the instances where actual drones are involved, those are attempts at adversaries to surveil our military and government and to scare the populace. That's to say adversarial drones have an additional use as psyops weapons against civilians and military weapons. Being able to send whatever you want into US airspace and the US being unable to do anything about it can be perceived as being threatening and scary.

A counter narrative to that can involving some UFO/alien mystery can quell panic and instead foster wonder and distraction.

Is it conspiracy theory time?

"... the conspiracy theory Project Blue Beam, which concerns an alleged plot to facilitate a totalitarian world government by destroying traditional religions and replacing them with a new-age belief system using NASA technology."

Take my money

I have no idea on the specifics for this particular operation, but in the general case [1]

    The purpose of United States psychological operations is to induce or reinforce behavior perceived to be favorable to U.S. objectives. 

In the context of UFOs, UAPs or whatever ... some possibilities are to hide advanced defense programs or to confuse potential enemy intelligence efforts. In fact, for an operation like this I would guess there are probably a dozen strategic objectives and not just one.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...

Distract from the lizard people.

Some speculations:

To spook enemies of the US and create a mystical aura of superiority around the US military and its capabilities.

To shake out moles, spies, and unreliable people / leakers.

As a cover for very terrestrial extremely advanced technology such as hypersonic weapons, drones, laser and directed energy weapons, etc.

To repeatedly float the idea of "alien disclosure" and then dash everyone's hopes in order to discredit the idea of extraterrestrial life and visitation. Why? Maybe they're concerned that we will eventually detect aliens and they want to blunt the cultural impact by making the public skeptical. Maybe there's some ideological factor at work like religious fundamentalism. Who knows.

the US military have been caught off guard several times with newer tech, showing that they’re actually well behind the curve. I don’t think there’s much evidence that they have any advanced tech.

They probably both have advanced technology and are caught off guard by other peoples' advanced technology. With China we are already back in a multipolar world.

I’m just saying that I have personally seen high level DoD officials jaws drop after showing them commercial capabilities. (I live in NoVA)

A lot of them are still fighting the Soviets

Can you relate a specific example of commercial tech the "jaw dropped" some DoD officials? Like what was the tech and what was the venue?

Think of what you may want to do in an asymmetric war.

All I can say is that IF there ever is an irrefutable visitation from an alien civilization in the future, it will be shit-show that will never end.

I have zero confidence that any government or their populace will be able to handle that realization without going completely bonkers. We simply can't handle it as a civilization. For every sane person who is curious and wants to interact positively with the artifact/being there will be a dozen different types of maniacs out to destroy whatever it is.

And if you believe that governments reflect the neurosis of their people, it fundamentally impossible for any government to deal with something like this rationally.

Realistically no one would care. I honestly think some of the 'if we meet aliens there will be moral panic' sentiment is the biggest psyop of all. Most humans realistically would not care unless there was a threat posed.

How do you know how people would react? It's never happened before. This is just paternalistic manipulation which by extension means the government should have much more power over people's lives 'for their own good'

If the aliens are far away and it's a SETI detection I think we'd manage, but if they are here I think things might get pretty wild.

Why would the organization that would be expected to protect our skies want to make people believe there is something to protect our skies?

Why would they want to make people believe there are things they can’t protect us from?

More funding from Congress.

If there is an actual threat from these possible visitors then they get all the funding.

Demonstration of psyops capabilities; entertainment.

You're the fnord sensei so you ought to know best. ;)

When I hear about this alien stuff or other "big government" conspiracies I'm always reminded of this saying, not sure where it's from.

"Behind every vast conspiracy theory is a sincere hope that somewhere out there, someone knows what they're doing."

(i.e., conspiracy nuts in a sense really want to believe in an all-powerful government because it would give them an assurance that someone really does know what's going on).

The military industrial complex is pretty powerful (arguably it's the most powerful organization on the planet), and is plenty capable of engaging in ongoing conspiracies and psyops. It's naive to believe that the same government who created nuclear bombs with the secret Manhattan Project, and that inserted intelligence agents into media companies in Project Mockingbird, is not continuing to conspire at levels of grand strategy equal to or exceeding those of its past projects.

You're referring to Operation Mockingbird which afaik was completely unrelated to Project Mockingbird (an illegal wiretap by the CIA on a US journalist)

I can't imaging trying to hide a Manhattan project today. They hid an entire city containing tens of thousands of people and consuming a serious whole segments of the total US electrical grid and federal budget.

Modern civilian OSINT would have been adequate to deduce fission work was being performed, assuming no one posted centrifuge schematics on their gaming Discord.

And it still didn't succeed, the first world leader to learn that fission weapons work was Stalin.

Distraction from lobbying, e.g. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/our-right-challenge-ju...