In 1958, Carl Jung published Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. He noted at the time that there were a lot of firsthand accounts of individuals seeing alleged alien spacecraft. Yet strangely, testimony was the only evidence we had. Jung wondered: “Considering the notorious camera-mindedness of Americans, it is surprising how few ‘authentic’ photos of UFOs seem to exist.”
That was 68 years ago. Jung was looking around and saying, “Gee, there are so many cameras in the world! Americans really love taking pictures. And not a single good one of a UFO? Really?”
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People understand now that the vast size of the universe across time and space makes it almost a certainty that we are one of many intelligent civilizations in our universe. What people miss is that same grand scale makes it vanishingly unlikely we will ever meet one. In 3.5 billion years of life on earth, we have had a civilization that could use radio waves only for the last 150. A similar civilization on a planet near enough that we could plausibly even detect them could have achieved radio transmission 3 million years ago and died out 1 million years ago, or may not arise for another 3 million. The odds that two intelligent space traveling civilizations will arise in geographical and temporal proximity such that they can be aware of each other are probably extremely small.
The simple reason why we are being inundated with pro-UFO content now is that
a) America is certainly experimenting with drones and top secret aircraft that are easier than ever for people to observe (we all have cameras now)
b) other nations — and particularly our opponents on the global stage — have the power to deploy small aircraft, drones balloons, etc. in our airspace (let us not forget the 2023 Chinese balloon incident) that would be better attributed to aliens
If (when?) we find aliens, they will most likely be microbial beings on the surfaces of neighboring planets. It’s fun to speculate about this, more fun to entertain crackpots, but it’s only fun.