The Great New Jersey Drone Invasion

I wanted to believe

When I first heard about drones invading the New Jersey skies, I hoped the Truth would be out there.

I genuinely wanted the drones to be a complete surprise to our government, something that would knock it off its perch. The US, with the world’s most powerful economy and military became a de-facto one-world government after the end of the Cold War. As a one-world government, it has nothing to fear from outside sources. It only fears its own people, and thus wages a constant, low-level war against them.

A one-world government has little use for its own citizens. It has no need to prove to competitors that it provides a good life for us, it has little need to innovate or educate. Its primary goal is to preserve its present power in amber. A poorly-educated and over-emotional citizenry is easily manipulated. This guarantees nothing will change.

But nature abhors stasis. Sometimes change bites you in the ass. I hoped a mystery-drone invasion would bring about the kind of change that the Sputnik satellite brought in 1957.

A bit of history for youths who were mis-educated by Howard Zinn and social/emotional learning: Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite was launched by America’s Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, into an elliptical low Earth orbit. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for three weeks before its three silver-zinc batteries became depleted. Aerodynamic drag caused it to fall back into the atmosphere on 4 January 1958.

To learn more about how Sputnik inspired American kids to accomplish great things, read Homer Hickam’s Rocket Boys.

Sputnik’s success launched the Space Race, an era of great political, military, technological, and scientific progress. Fear of Commies in Space forced the American government to see some value in their citizens. They decided that, maybe, they should start teaching kids some science and math.

Would a Sputnik 2 moment get social-emotional educators to teach practical, usable facts again? One can dream.

But it was all for naught. The more I learned about the mystery drones, the more obvious it became – some were commercial airplanes, some may have been part of a US military operation, some may have been homebuilt drones launched by teenagers. The great NJ drone invasion was (most likely) made in America. It would not spark another era of scientific progress. It was probably another viral hysteria, perhaps launched by the same government that now claims to know nothing about it.

The government that’s currently spreading ludicrously idiotic misinformation.

Back in 2010, the government was doing the same thing, trying to drive people into a state of hysteria over drones. I wrote about how this was going to kill American innovation in the industry – and predicted that China would eat our lunch.

The government feared civilian drone technology would challenge their power, but they ignored the fact that the tech can be used for good and evil. Some examples of good include:

Safety inspectors used drones at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to survey the damage.

Archaeologists use drones equipped with LiDAR and multispectral imaging to find buried, long-lost structures, map entire landscapes, and monitor fragile sites in detail.

Drones can fly close to tornadoes and into hurricanes to more accurately monitor a storm’s strength. [image thanks to Reed Timmer]

North Country Drone Search & Recovery uses thermal imaging to find and rescue lost pets.

Unfortunately, bureaucrats and authoritarians are not great at thinking out the box. Innovation means change, and, in their view, change is bad. Their main goal is to stop it.

As A. J. Kay said in this post, “viral hysteria has become the authoritarian weapon of choice in the digital age. Its ability to direct and control people’s thoughts and behaviors is extraordinary.”

The same ‘leadership’ that convinced Americans not to trust them (see: COVID) could be using that mistrust to further mess with our heads.

When people are talking about shooting drones out of the sky, it’s clear we’re in a state of viral hysteria. The government would love to see us doing that – it would give them an excuse to impose more regulations and restrictions on all sorts of flights, guaranteeing their ownership of the skies while we cower on the ground, fearing the sky gods.

What can we do? A. J. Kay suggests “Make yourself immune to hysteria. Practice critical thought. Expose yourself to new ideas. Nurture real life connections.”

Don’t fear the sky gods, become one. Get an app like flightradar24 to see what’s up there.

Buy a drone or build your own. Find a lost dog.