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Comment by jonnybgood | Hacker News Reader

> Given the strange way the helicopter appeared to fly right into the jet there will be no end to the speculation.

There's an ATC recording. No speculation necessary. The Army helicopter pilot is likely at fault.

People who take UAP seriously still will speculate, especially since drones can relay audio from controllers to talk to ATC as if they were onboard. People on the internet speculate about things that are a lot more clear than this case.

If you think a recording of ATC saying 'keep an eye out for that plane coming in to land' is going to end speculation then you have no understanding of how people behave on social media. For some reason people are upset about me pointing out the reality that this will generate lots of conspiracy theories. I invite you to consider this example of a prominent public figure engaging in exactly the sort of speculation I described.

https://bsky.app/profile/yasharali.bsky.social/post/3lgwrcvz...

Are you speaking from experience?

Yes, I research and write on extremists and have become depressingly familiar with conspiratorial narrative formation in real time, as well having read a huge number of research papers into social media dynamics. I used to spend a lot of time and effort debunking CTs but frankly it seems increasingly pointless to do so nowadays.

Your first sentence, being startled to learn about remote-controlled flying, gives the impression that you're one of those conspiracy theory hobbyists (a term I'm conjuring for idjits who speculate conspiracies when anything happens)...

Well that's on me for formatting the comment poorly. But my point is that there will be a lot of CTs about this motivated by political considerations, and this recent and relevant data point will be widely cited as evidence.

Examples I've noticed so far are the idea that it was an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the defense secretary, and that some 'plant' from the Biden administration deliberated engineered the crash because they were angry about the administration's policy on DEI.

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