I think it's a combination of 3 and 4.

1) is just not plausible, even though it seems to be the most commonly held on HN. The Chinese (or whatever adversary) aren't idiots. They know how the laws of physics work. They have spy programs and probably a better grasp of the cutting edge capabilities of the US than American citizens. They aren't going to be convinced the US possesses reverse engineered alien technology just because of some viral internet stories and woo-woo claims and a complete lack of hard evidence.

If the US were actually going to do that, I would think we would try something plausible but still just beyond our capabilities, or deception through channels our adversaries actually trust. Coming out with anything publicly, at all, ruins rather than enhances credibility to me.

2) less plausible than 1. If we had working, reverse engineered alien technology we would already be ruling the world with it, or at the very least demonstrate a far more aggressive military posture and robust space program than we do. Otherwise, what's the point?

3) has actual evidence: https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/ufo-believing-pentagon-bosses-...

4) related to 3 - it's probably not difficult to rope credulous 80 or 90 year old senators and congresspeople into believing this stuff.

It's the least interesting theory, which to me make it the most plausible. It's just a UFO flap that happens to be taking place in the post internet/social media age, combined with a bit of grift from UFO believers who've ingratiated themselves into the government.

But who knows? Maybe Grusch is right and interdimensional beings have been visiting us for unknown reasons since at least the 1930s and there is a global cold war on to reverse engineer what scraps we could find from their wreckage, and for some reason we've succeeded but decided not to tip our hand and instead just use our UFOs to smuggle drugs in the jungle and troll our own forces.

But the scale of the UFO narrative and the lack of hard evidence just don't compute. How do you retrieve the wreckage of football-field sized UFOs without leaving any trace of evidence behind? Any one of these crash events should be world-shaking news. How is it that the governments of the world are so perfectly competent as to cover everything up for so long, when it would clearly be in the interest of some to expose their adversaries? A "cold war" between competing international corporate interests trying to reverse engineer alien technology isn't sufficient. Game theory suggests it would be in the best interest of any government to go public and nationalize that effort. Being the society that cracks alien technology means you control the world, you're instantly ten thousand years ahead of everyone else. Militaries rendered irrelevant, trade, energy, everything transformed in your image. Everyone else is left in the dust banging rocks together while you're colonizing the moon. That would be worth pouring the entire effort of a society into.

But no, apparently everyone has this stuff locked away in vaults but no one does anything overt with it.

Not that Grusch would know personally, of course. We're told that he's been told, second and thirdhand, and that there exist classified documents, but of course all the good stuff is behind the curtain, because it always is. A lot of UAP footage and testimony which was classified and made public recently has been credibly explained by now. Just because something is classified doesn't mean it's real. But this time it's different, I guess? We just have to take his word for it.

Maybe it's interdimensional space elves in their magnificent flying machines and Raytheon has some weird shit in a vault somewhere and that's why we have Velcro and wifi. Like any skeptic, I want to believe, I want to live in a world where this stuff is real, but my bar for credibility is higher than folklore and lens flares. Give me something.