John provided a great update last night on the latest rounds of balloons (or whatever they are) showing up and being shot down around the country. So you may want to go back and read that first if you missed it. The real issue for journalists, however, is the almost total lack of information coming from the White House, with much of what has been released consisting of vague suggestions. Now, however, officials seem to be growing increasingly bothered by analysts who have been filling in the information gap with speculation. The administration has labeled all of this conjecture as the latest example of “misinformation” that needs to be swatted down. And the legacy media is dutifully marching out to broadcast that information so the peasants can be forced to shut their un-American pie-holes. (Associated Press, emphasis added)

The downing of four aerial devices by U.S. warplanes has touched off rampant misinformation about the objects, their origin and their purpose, showing how complicated world events and a lack of information can quickly create the perfect conditions for unchecked conjecture and misinformation.

The presence of mysterious objects high in the sky doesn’t help.

“There will be an investigation and we will learn more, but until then this story has created a playground for people interested in speculating or stirring the pot for their own reasons,” said Jim Ludes, a former national defense analyst who now leads the Pell Center for International Relations at Salve Regina University.

There you have it. You people need to stop “speculating” and “stirring the pot” about all of these objects that are being shot down. You’ll just have to wait until the Biden administration settles on whatever story they eventually plan to tell us about these “objects.”

I’ll grant you that some of the suggestions being made in the usual internet rabbit holes are definitely “out there” and at least bordering on conspiracy theory territory. These include claims that Washington is putting the objects up and shooting them down to distract attention away from the toxic railroad spill in Ohio, the war in Ukraine, or the investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop.

But it’s not just the supposed “fringe” of internet commentary complaining about the lack of transparency regarding these events. The White House is hearing about it from the press corps in the briefing room. If the Pentagon has figured out what these things are and where they’re coming from, that information should be shared with the public. The objects have already been seen from the ground by civilians and there is footage available of them being shot down. How much is national security going to be impacted by talking about it at this point?

As I’ve said here before, even if you’re the sort of person who tends to believe in the possibility of non-human intelligence lurking around the planet (a theory that I’m open to), I find it hard to believe that’s what we’re dealing with here. Reporters in the briefing room have asked John Kirby over and over whether the Pentagon thinks they might be aliens, and he didn’t help matters any when he said, “we’re not ruling anything out.”

So who are the people fueling all of this speculation and “pot-stirring?” It sounds to me like our White House officials are doing plenty of that on their own. And if they don’t want people making up their own answers, they should probably start providing us with some that can be backed up by science.

Don’t expect that to happen any time soon, though. There is some inside information about the objects and the government’s response to them being released today. But it’s only being given to Senators in a classified briefing scheduled for 10 am eastern time this morning. Do they really think this is going to tamp down the speculation? Quite the opposite. The next round of debate will include suggestions about how the real story must be “something huge” if they have to keep it classified.

The reality is that we already have a pretty good idea about why all of these objects are “suddenly showing up” in our skies. It’s been almost two weeks since NORAD Commanding General Glen VanHerck told reporters that we have missed many Chinese surveillance balloons in the past because of “a domain awareness gap.” We had fine-tuned our radar systems and other sensors to specifically look for hypersonic weapons and missiles. But we did it in a way that allowed the system to filter out smaller, slower-moving objects. Now the filters have been lifted and tons of what are very likely balloons of various species are showing up. Some might be Chinese. Some might be the Pentagon’s. Some might be from civilian contractors from the military-industrial complex such as Lockheed. Probably all of the above. Maybe the White House will be gracious enough to tell us at some point.