January 29, 2025

The Drone Invasion Report

My biggest concern is that this demonstrates the extent of public vulnerability to media-driven hysteria.

This week, amid far more pressing matters, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt briefly mentioned a drone update “directly” from Donald Trump, as promised.

Leavitt said, “After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized by the FAA for research and various other reasons.” She concluded, “This was not the enemy.”

More on what “authorized by the FAA” means in a minute.

As you recall, after initial media reports of drone sightings in New Jersey a week before Thanksgiving last year, the “drone invasion” became the lead story on mass media platforms for almost a month.

When I heard the first reports, I assumed this nonsense would be debunked and out of the news cycle in a day, but I told our editors that if the media reports metastasized, hysteria would follow.

And they did just that.

I noted in “The Hysterical Drone Hysterics” that both Right and Leftmedia outlets churned the drone news endlessly, even proclaiming it might be an imminent national security threat. Unfortunately, sometimes conservative MSM outlets like Fox News get too deep into the Beltway echo chamber and depart from all reason and logic when sensationalizing such reports.

Fox hadn’t been this immersed in airborne hysterics since Tucker Carlson used his primetime show in 2021 to claim repeatedly that common commercial jet contrails, a familiar site to all experienced pilots, were actually alien craft encounters.

Of course, churning the news is what all the commercial MSM do best to boost ad revenue.

The drone hysterics crossed political party lines, with both Democrats and Republicans expressing outrage that there were no better explanations for all the “increase” of sightings. That concern topped out with claims by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) that the drones over his state were being launched from an Iranian mother ship off the East Coast. New Jersey Demo Gov. Phil Murphy repeatedly called on the Biden/Harris regime to provide answers about who is flying the drones and why.

That prompted the FBI to stir up the churn by releasing a December 3 statement: “The FBI Newark, NJ State Police, and NJ Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness are asking for the public to report any information related to the recent sightings of possible drones flying in several areas along the Raritan River.”

Let’s see, what else was in the news cycle at the time of that FBI entry? Oh yeah, the head of the Biden Crime Syndicate issued an unprecedented preemptive pardon for his son, Hunter Biden. But … THE DRONES!

Almost a month after the first media drone reports, the hysterics had spread to nine states. On December 16, Biden’s White House national security coms guy, John Kirby, declared correctly: “Some of it’s manned, some of it’s unmanned. We absolutely acknowledge that a lot of these are probably drones, but they’re flying legally. And it is legal to fly drones in non-restricted airspace as long as you’re registered with the [Federal Aviation Administration] FAA, and there’s thousands and thousands of these kinds of flights every single day.” But who can believe anything coming out of the Biden administration?

Actually, there are millions of drones in use, some by government agencies for everything from security to surveys, and others by law enforcement and fire/rescue responders. However, the vast majority of drones are from hobbyists or commercial operators. These drones range in size from a few ounces to more than 1,000 pounds, the latter being very sophisticated.

So, circling back to Leavitt’s statement that the drones were “authorized by the FAA for research and various other reasons.” That means nothing more than what Kirby said a month ago — that drones are FAA-approved and mostly flown by certified or licensed operators. No doubt, however, saying “various other reasons” will tee up the conspiracy crowd.

All said, what concerns me most about the media-driven drone hysteria is that it demonstrates the level of public vulnerability to mass media nonsense. A significant factor in that vulnerability is the current level of public mistrust in our government.

As the Wall Street Journal editors observed at the time: “The loss of public trust in U.S. institutions is well-chronicled, and for an example of its cost consider the national mini-panic over unidentified aerial objects. No one in America seems to believe what anyone in authority says about them, and unproven claims are filling the vacuum. … But the larger need is for a government Americans can trust.”

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