The Drone Panic
By
Howard Bloom
In the middle of November, roughly four weeks ago, the first of a deluge of reports appeared complaining of large numbers of drones the size of SUVs hovering at night with their lights on over New Jersey. Later more of these reports came in from New York State and Connecticut. And the number of these drone reports mounted to more than 3,000.
The reports began to appear just as Congress held a highly-publicized hearing on UFOs. A hearing that may have focused the American public on threats from the sky.
But who or what was behind these drones? The New York Post, a newspaper founded by Fox News tycoon Rupert Murdoch, headlined “Missing radioactive material in New Jersey sparks drone theories.” Another New York Post headline declared that ‘Spy drones’ from China are likely cause of unexplained aircraft wreaking havoc over US.” Then there was the New York Post headline that “Mystery NJ drones are coming from Iranian mothership offshore.”
The drones were rapidly politicized. Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun trumpeted this headline: “Mystery deepens on who is behind ‘drones’ over US as Trump calls for army to shoot them down & blasts Biden’s silence.”
Meanwhile, New York Magazine dismissed this entire uproar as, “The Great Drone Panic of 2024.” And Vox added, “The drone hysteria is a glimpse of the future.”
On the other hand, Wired Magazine, a tech-oriented publication, pointed to drone appearances over key New Jersey military facilities like The US Army’s Picatinny Arsenal research and manufacturing facility, the US Naval Weapons Station Earle, Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf course, and, according to the Associated Press, even “drones flying around Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio,” drones that forced a four-hour shutdown of one of the biggest air force bases in the world. Topping all that, “according to the Coast Guard, a group of drones even followed one of the service’s vessels ‘in close pursuit’ near a state park.”
But is this drone hubbub a mass panic stoked by Rupert Murdoch to get clicks? Or is there something dangerous at work? One of the most alarming reports is based on an interview with China expert Gordon Chang. The interview appears in Britain’s the Express. Its headline is scary, “New York radiation levels spike amid drone sightings as Americans told ‘prepare for worst.’” The article’s sub headline adds to the dread. It warns that, “the hundreds of drones buzzing New Jersey homes and military bases could be the precursor to a grim attack.”
Gordon Chang explains that, “There have been reports of spikes” in “radiation in the New York metropolitan area. Two of them, one on each side of the Hudson.” Adds Chang, “That leads to the conclusion that maybe” the drones are “looking for an implanted nuclear weapon.” According to the Express article, Chang believes that the drones may be “hunting for a nuclear warhead that went ‘missing’ during the Cold War.” Or worse. Explains Chang, “For more than a decade US officials have been worried about the North Koreans taking apart a device, smuggling the parts into the United States and reassembling it in the location of their choice.” By a “device” Chang means a nuclear bomb. Planted in the USA. And China, Chang implies, may be working with North Korea on this project. That, he says, is what US government drones may be looking for.
But is this drone scare, in fact, a mundane occurrence hyped to the point of madness by sensationalist newspapers like The New York Post, The Sun, and the Express? Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, points out that if these were spy drones from Iran or China, they wouldn’t have their lights on at night. What’s more, Ryder explains that there are roughly a million registered drones in the United States, and eight thousand of them are in flight on any given day. The night-time drone swarms could just be drones flown by hobbyists looking for something new to spy on.
But the most disturbing information may lie hidden in an obscure August memo from the Department of Homeland Security to the nation’s local police departments. According to that memo, “violent extremists” in the US are increasingly searching for ways to modify “off-the-shelf” drones to ferry dangerous payloads, including “explosives, conductive materials, and” chemical weapons. Explosives and chemical weapons that could be used against you and me.
References:
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/drone-sightings-east-coast-response-380c1b84
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/joint-dhs-fbi-statement-on-reports-of-drones-in-new-jersey
https://www.wired.com/story/us-military-mystery-drones-response
https://www.wired.com/story/intel-officials-police-us-cities-drones-dhs
Chang, Gordon G. (2024). Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, Humanix Books, 2024
https://www.vox.com/politics/391335/391335?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://apnews.com/article/maine-homemade-explosive-devices-drone-d67ca33abb4ba15eba07a8cd5fe258e2
https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fbi-dhs-domestic-terrorism-strategic-report-2022.pdf/view
https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2024/12/16/drone-sightings-in-ohio
https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/157945/New-York-radiation-drones-Jersey
https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/1578Q2/drones-new-jersey-new-york-ohio-sightings
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Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. One of his eight books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. He does news commentary at 1:06 am Eastern Time every Wednesday night on 545 radio stations on the highest-rated overnight syndicated talk radio show in North America, Coast to Coast AM. Bloom’s new book, coming out in February, 2025, is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is wrong. For more, see http://howardbloom.net.