If I put my conspiracy theorist hat, this "To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science" smells to me to a "Intelligence Community" front.
It's that if you check the founders they are related to the "intelligence community", and the way the video was "leaked" to the NYT feels kind of funny too. This guy Luís Elizondo (1) is clearly from the "community", what it's not so clear is that he was in charge of investigating UFOs as he is claiming. I don't know, maybe they just want to make money or they are legitimate and just want the truth.
Of course, this is just a "feeling" that I have, so, I'm not claiming is falsifiable or it's the true, for now it's only something to have an eye on that I wanted to share.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21859896
tl;dr it is a "psyop" but the target is our servicemembers who were too scared to report weird phenomena.
I don't know if laughing or crying about that statement and what it says about humans.
As far as it being bad news — it’s never comforting to learn a different civilization has vastly superior technology, and may not share your values.
The writer of the article is dismissing evidence to fit his theory. And the guy is a professor of epistemology.
https://youtu.be/Eozxt_HnPu4 around 52min)
The issue is that the data is classified and it was not released yet, making it more difficult to independently prove those claims.