The New Jersey drone hysteria exposes one salient truth: no one knows anything

Okay, I get it, we’re all sick of the drones. I went to two holiday parties over the weekend in the New Jersey suburbs, and it was all anyone wanted to talk about. The news coverage has been breathless, all-consuming, and most importantly, completely unhinged.

No one knows anything. The cops don’t know anything. The feds sure don’t sound like they know anything. Sure, everyone has a theory. Depending on where you fall on the DSM-5 spectrum for conspiracy-addled nonsense, they could be a few DJI Mavic enthusiasts having a laugh, a bunch of small planes, or a full-on alien invasion of our nation’s most consequential state.

But the people who are supposed to know things — the ones whose jobs are to have access to all the technology and equipment afforded by bloated law enforcement budgets, the ones who have security clearance and subpoena power and all the various trappings of authority that the vast majority of us can only dream of — don’t know shit. Actually, it’s worse than that: they think they know shit, and they are willing to confidently stand before the public and say as much, even when they actually don’t know shit.

Here are the best examples I could find of current and former elected leaders and government officials spouting utterly deranged nonsense about the drone sightings.

Jeff Van Drew is a member of Congress from New Jersey, where the bulk of the sightings have taken place. He’s also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which entitles him to high-level security briefings. He should know shit! But alas, he does not, as evidenced by his completely factless musings about the drones coming from an “Iranian mothership” anchored off the Jersey Shore.

“I’m going to tell you the real deal. Iran launched a mothership that contains these drones,” Van Drew told Fox News. “It’s off the East Coast of the United States of America. They’ve launched drones.”

When someone says they’re going to “tell you the real deal,” you know you’re about to get body-slammed with some grade-A horsepucky.

The Pentagon denied this, but Van Drew doubled down, slamming defense department officials for treating us like we’re “stupid” and withholding information about the drones. And fearing that his fearmongering about Iran was insufficiently fearful, he broadened the scope to include “China” and “somebody else.”

Literally one day later, he walked the whole thing back in a tersely worded statement. (No Fox News appearances for embarrassing mea culpas, I guess.) He acknowledged that the Iranian mothership he previously said on national television was off the coast of the United States was actually — get this — still in Iran.

“This new information only brings us closer to figuring out what is really going on,” Van Drew said. Yes, congressman, thank you for your service.

The drone sightings hysteria has been a golden opportunity for politicians who like to get their hands dirty. If he was still in office, you could picture ex-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in some flight tower, wearing a parka and a headset, operating the radar equipment himself.

Instead, we’ve got grainy iPhone footage from former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who claims he “personally witnessed (and videoed)” several large drones hovering over his home. See! It’s not just New Jersey! Maryland has unexplained phenomena, too.

I mean, sure, some of the lights Hogan spotted were just the constellation Orion, according to a community guidelines note appended to his tweet. And the stars Sirius and Procyon. But hey, at least he got some fresh air.

“Like many who have observed these drones, I do not know if this increasing activity over our skies is a threat to public safety or national security,” he said on X. (Last week, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security said that “many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft, operating lawfully” and weren’t a threat to public safety.)  

Belleville Mayor Michael Melham wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass. As mayor of a relatively small New Jersey suburb (population approximately 35,000), he knew he needed to use his preciously allotted five minutes on Fox 5 to say something that was going to get him noticed and generate some content. He needed to up the stakes.

What if the drones were looking to steal our nuclear secrets?

“What might they be looking for,” Melham mused. “Well, potentially, we’re aware of a threat that came into Port Newark. Maybe that’s radioactive material. There was, and there is, an alert that’s out right now that radioactive material in New Jersey has gone missing, on December 2nd.”

First of all, Melham’s not technically wrong. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did say some radioactive material went missing in a recent alert. But it’s missing some important context, namely that said material is cancer screening equipment used to calibrate PET scanners. And the amount in question was “unlikely to cause permanent injury.” Not exactly the nuclear codes!

It kind of feels like President-elect Donald Trump is the only one having fun with the drone sightings. In addition to trolling one of his favorite whipping boys, ex-NJ Governor Chris Christie, Trump is also totally in his element when he gets to spout inane bullshit about something on which nobody can agree what’s real and what’s not.

First, he said he was canceling his trip to his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, because drones were spotted there. (The Federal Aviation Administration had already issued temporary flight restrictions prohibiting drone flights over Bedminster as well as above the Picatinny Arsenal, a military installation.) He claimed, without evidence, that the military knew where the drones “took off from.” And in a social media post, he urged people to “shoot them down!!!”

Shooting in the air is a bad idea! Especially in densely populated areas like New Jersey. Do not listen to this man.

I guess maybe that’s been the key takeaway to all this drone silliness. Do not listen to any of these people. Sure, they have official-sounding titles — congressman, mayor, president! — but really, they’re just like us. They don’t know shit, but they’re happy to pretend that they do. They look up in the sky and they see a few lights, and suddenly, they’re like one of those uncontacted Amazonian tribes that has never witnessed modern technology.

The FBI, Pentagon, Homeland Security, and FAA released a joint statement yesterday that essentially throws a bucket of cold water on all the speculation. Their assessment: “a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones.”

In other words, exactly what you would expect when you look up at night in a densely populated area in the year 2024. The most boring answer is usually the one that’s most likely to be right.