Went through the CIA one as well, and it's almost designed to be opaque and vague. UFO's create interesting ethical questions and can be useful thought experiments for contemporary issues.
A good one is where, say you are checking in on a civilization to see whether it's about to become space faring, and given the amount of energy required for it, the tech is dangerous to any other civilization these recent space arrivers might find. The question is whether they're going to pose a threat to the regional galactic order, and if they haven't got their cultural act together, do you let them?
Second, if you do intervene, does their new knowledge of the intervention of an intermediate power harm their social and ethical development, given their entire political economy and ethics will switch from discovered principles, to merely competing to appeal to the most powerful force they can? (I think this would make them impossible to trust.) Could it recover and develop on its own if you arrived and chose some of them for benefits but not others? Do you pick the most dominant, or the species with the most suitability to become part of the space faring community.
It costs them nothing to wipe us out and spare the universe the trouble, so what must they believe about life, the universe, and everything to not do so. Economics may be universal, etc. I don't think these are dumb questions at all, and they resemble ones that state dept's make very day, so I don't dismiss people interested in UFOs as they are interested in some pretty useful questions.
A good one is where, say you are checking in on a civilization to see whether it's about to become space faring, and given the amount of energy required for it, the tech is dangerous to any other civilization these recent space arrivers might find. The question is whether they're going to pose a threat to the regional galactic order, and if they haven't got their cultural act together, do you let them?
Second, if you do intervene, does their new knowledge of the intervention of an intermediate power harm their social and ethical development, given their entire political economy and ethics will switch from discovered principles, to merely competing to appeal to the most powerful force they can? (I think this would make them impossible to trust.) Could it recover and develop on its own if you arrived and chose some of them for benefits but not others? Do you pick the most dominant, or the species with the most suitability to become part of the space faring community.
It costs them nothing to wipe us out and spare the universe the trouble, so what must they believe about life, the universe, and everything to not do so. Economics may be universal, etc. I don't think these are dumb questions at all, and they resemble ones that state dept's make very day, so I don't dismiss people interested in UFOs as they are interested in some pretty useful questions.