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Over recent years Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) have become an increasingly visible topic in public discourse. However, the epistemological picture is highly opaque, with few concrete details confirmed or publicly available, and with the discourse beset with allegations of concealment and cover-ups, with long-held suspicions that information has been kept secret. This paper sheds lights on these dynamics by delving into the informational complexity around this topic. The aim here isn’t to determine or uncover the "truth" about this phenomenon, which we are not in a position to do anyway (having no priviledged access to classified or otherwise secret information, and only relying on what is in the public domain). Rather, we are just attempting to reason through, from first principles, the interrelated nature of information, people, institutions, and potential UAP, such that together these intersecting considerations might help explain the murkiness and confusion that habitually surround this topic. Our starting point is to note three crucial properties of information that influence whether and with whom it is shared, namely information as power, responsibility, and value. We then suggest these properties are enhanced to the extent information is novel, unusual, not widely known/believed, existentially challenging, connected to scientific/technological development, and militarily/politically consequential. Significantly, these “secrecy multipliers” all pertain to the UAP topic. The paper then reviews eleven intersecting reasons for UAP-related secrecy. The first five concern the nature of institutions and people, and are not specific to this topic per se: institutions create secrets; institutional complexity; information control; information impedance; and the lure of secrecy. The next six more closely pertain to UAP, and involve various forms of concern, including regarding: the existential implications of the topic; possible “beings” connected to UAP; geopolitical power dynamics; legal repercussions arising from alleged concealment; institutional reputations; and public reaction. To be clear, the plausibility of these secrecy-related dynamics in relation to the topic does not mean that UAP are in fact necessarily “genuine” (i.e., extraordinary). Nevertheless, whatever the ultimate truth about UAP proves to be, these considerations help explain the historic and present secrecy around the phenomenon.
Lomas et al. (Mon,) studied this question.