109. Ghosts in the Battlespace: The UAP Threat with the James Gang

“We have craft that defy physics as we know it and are moving at speeds that are at least a hundred times faster than anything a human or robot… can produce on the planet.”

[Editor’s Note: Today’s The Convergence podcast welcomes back our very own James Gang — proclaimed Mad Scientists Dr. James Giordano and Dr. James Canton — discussing a topic featured prominently in recent news stories and Congressional testimony: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, now referred to by Drs. Giordano and Canton as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a preliminary assessment to Congress several years ago. This assessment documented the findings of the Department of Defense’s UAP Task Force (UAPTF) and the ODNI National Intelligence Manager for Aviation — focusing on reports that involved UAP largely witnessed firsthand by military aviators and collected from systems considered to be reliable. These reports described incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2021 — 144 reports originated from U.S. Government sources. Of these, 80 reports involved observation with multiple sensors. This preliminary assessment states:

“Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation.”

UAPs represent a currently unknown aspect of the Operational Environment — all the more troubling, given the possibility that they could be foreign adversarial systems, operating freely within U.S. territorial spaces. Drs. Giordano and Canton dismiss the “woo” factor often associated with this topic, describe what we do know about UAPs, and lay out three recommendations to better understand these phenomena — Enjoy!]

Proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. James Giordano is Pellegrino Center Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Biochemistry; Chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program; and Chair of the Subprogram in Military Medical Ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC. Dr. Giordano is a Bioethicist of the Defense Medical Ethics Center at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences; Distinguished Stockdale Fellow in Science, Technology, and Ethics at the United States Naval Academy; Senior Fellow in Biosecurity, Technology, and Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI; Senior Science Advisory Fellow of the Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA), Joint Staff / J-39, The Pentagon; Chair Emeritus of the Neuroethics Project of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Brain Initiative; and serves as Director of the Institute for Biodefense Research, a federally funded Washington, DC, think tank dedicated to addressing emerging issues at the intersection of science, technology and national defense. He previously served as Donovan Group Senior Fellow, U.S. Special Operations Command; member of the Neuroethics, Legal, and Social Issues Advisory Panel of the Defens...