As most people interested in the UFO phenomenon already know, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was a Pentagon UAP research initiative headed by former intelligence officer Luis Elizondo.
One of the most intriguing (and puzzling) pieces of information to come out of that program publicly is a briefing slide from a presentation put together by AATIP employees, provided to senior officials presumably in an effort to be granted status as a Special Access Program and gain funding. The presentation was found on a website belonging to former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Mellon and published with detailed analysis on a blog called The Mind Sublime.
While the entire presentation itself is nothing short of extraordinary, one slide in particular describes some very exotic and potentially concerning technologies.
Slide 9, as it is referred to in the UFO community, is labeled “DoD Threat Scenario” and lists several capabilities that could be easily dismissed as science fiction if not for the source of the material. In fact, the slide itself concludes with the curious proclamation that “what was considered ‘phenomena’ is now quantum physics.”
“Cognitive human interface” is a phrase that many in the UFO community have long sought to understand, though more recently some former officials (including Elizondo himself) have dropped hints as to what the meaning could entail.
In an interview with James Iandoli from Engaging the Phenomenon, Elizondo is asked what “cognitive human interface” meant to the officials working at AATIP.
Elizondo responds, “I think you know what that means to AATIP. It’s kind of your CE5 now, isn’t it?”
CE5 is a meditation-like protocol used by some in the community as a way to summon UFOs at will, or so it is claimed. I myself am agnostic on the issue, but in my opinion Elizondo’s comments here definitely lend some credence to the legitimacy of the idea. What his remarks do tell me is that whatever this interface is, it does exist, regardless of the potential ability for humans to initiate contact through it.
If this interface does in fact exist, it must be noted that the name itself clearly implies a relationship to human cognitive function.
A recent interview with Stanford geneticist Dr. Garry Nolan on the Lex Fridman Podcast may provide a little more insight into this aspect of the phenomenon, at least in my view. Nolan emphasizes this is pure speculation, though his credentials and experience in the field studying the biological effects of UFOs on US service members tells me it may be a more informed speculation than most people could provide.
Fridman eventually brings up how the phenomenon would have to first find a comprehensive method to interact with humanity, using an analogy of how humans would go about figuring out a way to communicate with ants.
He postulates that a good starting point would be understanding the DNA and the environment the ants live in, and then using the knowledge to perturb that system in order to further understand the dynamics of how it works. Once the system is fully understood, you can harness that understanding and steer the system in a certain direction.
Nolan responds with his own thoughts on the strategy.
How would you, as a higher intelligence, represent yourself to a lesser intelligence? Well, let’s go back to pre-civilization. Maybe you show yourself as the spirits in the forest. You give messages through that. Once you get a little more civilized, then you show yourself as the gods. Then you’re God.
Well, we don’t believe in God anymore necessarily, not everybody does. So what do we believe in? We believe in technology, so you show yourself as a form of technology, right? But the common thread is you are not alone and there’s something else here with you, and there’s something, as you said, watching you. At least watching over your shoulder.
But I think, like any good parent, you don’t tell your student everything. You make them learn, and learning requires mistakes. Because if you tell them everything, then they get lazy.
Later on in the interview, Garry expands on the ant analogy and what the most effective way to communicate with them would be.
Let’s take the ants again as an example. Let’s say that you wanted to make ants practical, you wanted to use them for something. You wanted to use them as a form of biological robot. Now, DARPA and other people have been trying to use insects to turn them into biological robots. But if you wanted to, you would have to interact with their sense of smell, right? Their pheromone system that they use to interact with each other.
So you would either create those molecules to talk to them — I’m not saying talk to them as if they’re intelligent, but talk to them to manipulate them in ways that you want — or if you were advanced enough, you would use some sort of electromagnetic, or other means, to stimulate their neurons in ways that would accomplish the same goal as the pheromones. But by doing it in a sort of telefactoring way.
So let’s say you wanted to telefactor with humans. You would interact with them, and again this is a technology which you could imagine possible, you could telefactor information into the sensory system of a human. But then each human is a little bit different, so either you know enough about them to tailor it to the individual, or you just basically take advantage of whatever sensory net that that individual has.
So if you happen to be good at sound, or you happen to be a very visually inclined individual, then maybe the sensory information that you get that’s most effective in terms of transmitting information would come through that portal.
Fridman then posits that the phenomenon would have to figure out what humans observe on earth and how to stimulate the perception system in a way that isn’t too weird for the ants accept as real.
Nolan responds, relating this idea to supposed beings that appear to certain experiencers as an “alien” race called “the Greys.”
That’s why I always find this issue of people talking about the so-called Greys as interesting, because it is related to what you’re saying. They’re different enough, but they’re not so different as to be scary, right? They’re not venom-dripping fangs, right? They’re different enough, but it’s also like they’re what you could imagine us becoming in some some distant future.
So is that a purposeful representation? I don’t know. I don’t believe in the Greys, for instance, but I believe that people think that they see it. So if we’re talking about a communication strategy that says “we’re like you but not the same as you,” this might be a manifestation that you represent in terms of a communication strategy.
There is clearly a lot to unpack here, but in the context of the “cognitive human interface” there are a few specific aspects I would like to focus on.
To start off, I think Nolan’s use of the phrase “telefactor” is very interesting. I initially had no idea what it meant, so I looked it up and surprisingly couldn’t find much on the subject. From the few sources I could locate, I learned that telefactory is apparently a very old science fiction idea. The only full definition I could find was on YourDictionary, which I assume is a less than optimal source but the best I can cite at the time of this writing.
Telefactor meaning
A remote manipulation system in which a slave device mimics the motions of a master device manipulated directly by the operator.
That’s a pretty nerve-wracking concept in the context of Nolan’s speculative ant theory, especially considering his thoughts on us turning them into biological robots. Telefactory of human senses would no doubt be an effective way of initiating what I can only interpret as a form of social engineering by the phenomenon.
If this “remote manipulation system” is in fact synonymous with the “cognitive human interface,” it would also make sense that those knowledgable on the subject would caution against attempting to summon this clearly advanced intelligence.
Without knowing the intentions behind whatever is controlling this system, and with the biological effects widely reported by experiencers, one could be putting themselves in serious danger by not fully understanding the implications of their actions. Elizondo, Tom Delonge, and others have in fact warned against this very thing.
This brings us to the question of how this telefactor would work.
Anil Seth, a professor of neuroscience and consciousness at the University of Sussex, has a theory that human perception of reality is really just a “controlled hallucination.” The following paragraph is my personal interpretation of his theory, and as I don’t resemble anything close to a scientist I would take my understanding of it with a grain of salt.
Essentially, our brain can only form “best guesses” about what our reality is. Our brain projects those best guesses out into the world as a hallucination, and our 5 senses act as an instrument to detect perception errors that we then use to control that hallucination. Our perception of reality is only as good as our detection of these errors and how the brain adapts to them. The constant processing of these predictions and how our senses inform the brain of their accuracy is what defines our moment to moment existence.
Now that I’ve completely butchered that aspect of Seth’s fascinating theory, I’ll provide you with a presentation he gave and an example in his own words from his book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.
When I look at a red chair, the redness I experience depends both on properties of the chair and on properties of my brain. It corresponds to the content of a set of perceptual predictions about the ways in which a specific kind of surface reflects light. There is no redness-as-such in the world or in the brain. As Paul Cézanne said, “color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.”
The larger claim here is that this applies far beyond the realm of color experience. It applies to all of perception. The immersive multisensory panorama of your perceptual scene, right here and right now, is a reaching out from the brain to the world, a writing as much as a reading. The entirety of perceptual experience is a neuronal fantasy that remains yoked to the world through a continuous making and remaking of perceptual best guesses, of controlled hallucinations.
You could even say that we’re all hallucinating all the time. It’s just that when we agree about our hallucinations, that’s what we call reality.
After contemplating all of this, I would speculate that perhaps the best way for a more advanced intelligence to utilize a remote manipulation system would be to interfere with the human brain’s ability to detect or interpret these perception errors through our senses.
As these perception errors are the only thing keeping our “best guesses” (hallucinations) controlled and grounded in a common reality, manipulation by sensory anomalies would be a very effective way to steer our society in a certain direction. As Fridman and Nolan mentioned, however, this would have to be done in a subtle enough way as to not completely shatter our perception error handling.
Looking at AATIP slide 9 once more, I can see how this may have been considered by those who created the presentation by reading the first sentence again.
The science exists for an enemy of the United States to manipulate both physical and cognitive environments in order to penetrate U.S. facilities, influence decision makers, and compromise national security.
What better way to nudge the course of humanity in a certain direction than to use an advanced technology to subtly, cognitively manipulate top-level decision makers?
This is all very somber, indeed.
On a personal note, I just want to say that the more I read and listen to regarding the UFO subject, the more clear it becomes how little I know. These threads may not even tie together at all and I could be just wasting my time, grasping at nothing. Looking for patterns and speculating about concepts that I have minimal understanding of is probably not a great idea, but the mystery surrounding the phenomenon is so vast and intriguing that I can’t help but do exactly that.
I am not a scientist or an academic. I have zero expertise in anything that would be relevant to figuring this thing out on a nuts and bolts level.
I’m just one of many, trying to piece together what little information we do receive from those who have more knowledge.
What I have learned on this journey has been life-changing, and I’m starting to believe it could be that these lessons are actually the point.
As Nolan said, learning requires mistakes and if you tell them everything then they get lazy.
Don’t get lazy.
