How humanity responds to first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life may determine the fate of our species. We’re only halfway through 2023, and it already feels like the year of contact with aliens. In February, President Joe Biden ordered the shooting down of three unidentified weather phenomena – what NASA calls UFOs. Then came the alleged leak of UFO footage of a Navy pilot, followed by news of an informant’s report of a possible cover-up of UFO investigations by the US government. A recent independent analysis published in June suggests that the UFOs may have been collected by a secret agency of the US government.

If any real evidence of extraterrestrial life comes to light through whistleblower testimony or an accepted cover-up, humans will face a historic paradigm shift. As members of the Indigenous Studies Working Group, who were asked to contribute our disciplinary expertise to a workshop affiliated with the SETI Research Center in Berkeley, we examined centuries of cultural contacts from around the world and their consequences. Our joint preparation for the workshop was based on interdisciplinary research in Australia, New Zealand, Africa and the Americas.

Our group statement, in its final form, showed the need for different perspectives on the ethics of listening to alien life and the broadening of what defines “intelligence” and “life.” Based on our findings, we consider the first contact to be a long process that has already begun rather than an event. The question immediately arises of who is “responsible” for preparing for contact with alien life. The communities likely to be involved in any contact scenario – and their interpretative lenses – are military, institutional, and scientific.

By giving Americans the legal right to benefit from space tourism and the extraction of planetary resources, the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 could mean that companies will be the first to find signs of extraterrestrial societies. Otherwise, most activities related to extraterrestrial communication and evidence fall under a program called SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, even though the detection of unknown weather events is often a military matter and NASA takes the lead in sending messages from Earth.

SETI is a collection of scientists involved in various research efforts, including Breakthrough Listening, which listens for “techno-signatures” or markers of advanced technology such as pollutants. SETI researchers are almost always scientists working in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Few representatives of the social sciences and humanities had the opportunity to contribute to the creation and preparation of the theme.

In 2018, the Berkeley SETI Research Center invited working groups, including our non-scientific Indigenous Studies Working Group, to produce perspective papers for consideration by SETI scholars in a promising interdisciplinary action.

listening ethics

Neither Breakrought Listen nor SETI’s website contain any current ethical guidelines other than a commitment to transparency. Our working group was not the first to raise this issue. With the SETI Institute and some research centers on their agenda, it seems appropriate to ask who NASA and SETI are responding to and what ethical principles they follow for a possible first contact scenario.

Another rare exception to SETI’s STEM-centrism, the SETI post-detection center appears to be the most likely to develop a range of contact scenarios. Possible situations include searching for ET artifacts, detecting signals thousands of light-years away, resolving language mismatches, finding microbial organisms in space or on other planets, and biologically infecting them or our species. Another question is whether the US government or military leaders will listen to these scenarios.

SETI scientists ask, “What harm can come from just listening?” SETI Head of Research Emeritus Jill Tarter advocated eavesdropping because any alien civilization will perceive our listening techniques as immature or immature.

But our study group drew on the history of colonial contact to illustrate the dangers of thinking that the aims of civilization were relatively advanced or intelligent. For example, when Christopher Columbus and other European explorers arrived in the Americas, these relationships were shaped by the preconceived notion that “Indians” were less developed because they did not write. This led to decades of slavery for the Native American population.

The statement of the task force also states that the act of listening itself is already in the “contact phase”. Like colonialism itself, contact is best viewed as a series of events that began with planning rather than a single event. Unauthorized wiretapping is just another form of surveillance isn’t it? Attentive but haphazard eavesdropping seemed to our study group a form of eavesdropping. It seems paradoxical that we begin our relationship with aliens by eavesdropping without their consent, while we are actively working to prevent other countries from eavesdropping on certain US communications. If humans are initially perceived as indifferent or careless, contact with aliens is likely to lead them to colonize us.

Contact histories

Throughout the history of Western colonization, even in the few cases where contacts had to be protected, contact resulted in brutal violence, epidemics, enslavement, and genocide. James Cook’s voyage aboard HMS Endeavour in 1768 was initiated by the Royal Society. This prestigious British scientific society commissioned him to calculate the solar distance between Earth and the Sun by measuring the apparent motion of Venus across the Sun from Tahiti. Society strictly forbade him from any colonial relationship.

Although Cook had achieved his scientific goals, he was ordered by the kingdom to map and request as many territories as possible on the return journey. Cook’s actions led to large-scale colonization and deportation of indigenous peoples in Oceania, including the forced conquest of Australia and New Zealand.

The Royal Society gave Cook a “master directive” to do no harm and only conduct research that would benefit humanity at large. However, researchers are rarely independent of their sponsors, and their research reflects the political context of their time.

As academics attuned to both research ethics and colonial history, we wrote about Cook in our task force statement to show why SETI might want to clearly separate their intentions from those of corporations, the military, and government. Cook’s and SETI’s journeys, though separated by vast amounts of time and space, share essential qualities, including their appeal to celestial science at the service of all humanity. They also share a discrepancy between their ethical protocol and the possible long-term consequences of their success.

The first domino of the public disclosure of ETs or the discovery of bodies or ships could trigger successive events, including military action, corporate resource extraction, and perhaps even geopolitical restructuring. The history of imperialism and colonialism around the world shows that not everyone benefits from colonization. No one knows for sure how the alien interaction will turn out, but it’s better to consider cautionary tales in Earth’s history rather than later. Source