Past
my original rant in this thread, I would propose a "Hangar 18" model for understanding what's going on. Perhaps a P.T. Barnum sized circus tent might be more appropriate. Either way, it's a blivet in the Vonnegut sense, an overflow container for a broad horizon of strange frontiers, such as
"Boy, Antarctica Is Pretty Weird, Huh?" or
"Can You Fit A Whole Government Into a Special Access Program?" or
"Why Did Maxwell and Tesla Both Have Their Work Carefully Suppressed By The Same Anglo-American Establishment?" There is a rich spectrum of material to draw from when it comes time for some real pyrotechnics and sizzling headlines.
(Who wants aliens to be real more than the cable TV news companies? The viewership numbers and ad revenue would be unprecedented, like a decade straight of Presidential election seasons.)
I would also propose, at the risk of repeating myself, that for the vast majority of human beings on this planet through 2100 AD, it matters vanishingly little whether or not "there are aliens out there" in the face of a global empire establishing a planet-spanning system of technocratic control on the basis that "there are aliens out there" we need to be protected from / prepared for / obedient to.
The questions of extraterrestrial vs. intra/infraterrestrial vs. wholly disembodied NHI vs. exotic matter nanotech probes is a hall of mirrors, but all of it squints towards the existence of a Something that has long been unspeakable in respectable society. For the consensus manufacturing system to reverse course on that decades-long project is significant, likely downstream of something far bigger & broader than the family problems of the latest asshole in the White House. (And on that narrow issue, I think you can draw a clear, linear narrative between Hunter Biden headlines being followed by Donald Trump headlines; I think DOJ is running point on that one, not DOD.)
For all our sakes, let's pray that there are not alien civilizations with long term goals for our planet, because they won't be the risk vector: average citizens eager to serve them at your expense will be. It won't be aliens coming to kill you for resisting, it will be apes just like us.
Anyway. As wild as it all is, it's important to retain the perspective that it's not
unprecedented. Our official history is a lie, our official physics is a lie, our official biology is a lie, it's just going to be under revision now, possibly major, sweeping revision, too.