In this February 2023 live stream, Billy Carson argues that the United States is not shooting down UFOs. He accepts that the giant balloon downed off South Carolina was a Chinese surveillance craft, reads the smaller objects shot down days later as American-made drones used in a military drill, and warns that staged alien incidents could be used to justify huge new spending on the Space Force.
The February 2023 shoot-downs were the first time U.S. fighters had fired on unidentified objects over North America, and they came just as the Pentagon was reopening the UFO question under the label UAP. For days officials would not say what the later objects were, and speculation filled the gap. Carson's stream records how one prominent voice in the disclosure community read the events as they happened, and his conclusion is more skeptical than many viewers might expect. For the wider timeline, see [The UAP Hearings Explained](/the-uap-hearings-explained-2017-2026-what-was-claimed-what-was-proven-and-what-is-next).
What the video covers
Three questions (from about 2:25)
Carson opens with three questions: what are these objects, why is this happening now, and who made them? He says he has never heard of F-22s being scrambled to shoot down balloons, and that the deeper he dug, the more he suspected several agendas running at once. He frames the events with China–Taiwan tensions and a critique of political elites that runs through the stream.
The Chinese balloon (from about 12:13)
Carson reads a USA Today report that the military had shot down yet another unidentified object over North America on a Sunday, then plays a news segment on the balloon an F-22 brought down off South Carolina. It describes a craft about 200 feet tall flying near 65,000 feet, with a payload the size of a regional jet, and traces its route from the Aleutian Islands over Alaska into Idaho and Montana, home of Malmstrom Air Force Base and its nuclear missile fields, then likely over Kansas and Nebraska.
Carson accepts that account. The balloon is an identified object, not a UFO, and China was not trying to hide it: he calls the flight "a database update mission, really is all it is," refreshing old imagery of missile sites, probably relayed home by satellite link. Why not use a satellite? Because, he says, the United States dominates the space above its territory, and "whoever controls space controls the planet."
The objects that were not balloons (from about 22:42)
Carson lays out three possibilities: alien vehicles, Chinese surveillance devices, or a mix of American craft and alien probes. What interests him are the later objects, which he says the military described as strangely shaped and metallic, with no wings, cockpit or fuselage, flying at about 40,000 and 60,000 feet.
He then plays a Pentagon briefing: NORAD detected an object on February 9, and fighters brought it down off the northern coast of Alaska the next day. It was flying at 40,000 feet, posed a reasonable threat to civilian flights and was about the size of a small car, unlike the balloon downed off South Carolina on February 4.
Disclosure and the money trail (from about 27:11)
Carson turns to the documents from AATIP, the Pentagon's earlier UFO study program, and the UAP material released in 2021 and 2022, which in his telling describe objects moving at 5,000 to 6,000 miles per hour and making turns that would kill a pilot. He reads these releases as a managed disclosure after eight decades of denial, and the renaming of UFOs as UAP as a way to remove the stigma, open a new office and still say very little.
The core of his case follows. Space Command, he says, had existed for about two decades before the Space Force was announced, and he links the new service to the Pentagon's long-running failure to account for trillions of dollars, spending he says was once explained away by wars abroad. A threat from the sky offers a fresh justification. The balloons were unexpected, he grants, but with fighters already on alert, the military used the moment to fly and shoot down its own experimental drones.
His verdict and his warning (from about 38:26)
"These are not UFOs or UAPs," Carson says of the objects downed after the balloon. Craft in the official reports outrun fighter jets, he notes, yet these fell easily, and a probe sent across interstellar distances would carry shields or defenses rather than be lost within hours. He reads the episode as a war drill and predicts escalation: a Navy ship buzzed by an object, then an object appearing to fire on a ship or base. His precedent is the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which he calls a fake attack, admitted in declassified papers, used to take the country into the Vietnam War.
Real visitors, and why they would not attack (from about 44:45)
Carson stresses that he fully believes UFOs visit Earth, and holds up the Enuma Elish, the seven tablets of creation, as an ancient account of beings coming to this planet. A civilization a million years ahead would not invade with laser beams, he argues; it could release a pathogen from orbit without ever landing. Instead, he believes, visitors observe humanity the way wildlife filmmakers observe animals, hiding, filming, tranquilizing, tagging and releasing them, a parallel he draws to abduction reports. "They are waiting for us to grow up," he says.
Contractors, spaceplanes and the Black Knight (from about 55:36)
Carson argues that the government now subcontracts advanced work to firms such as Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works and Northrop Grumman, keeping it beyond Freedom of Information Act requests, and claims, from meetings with private space companies, that their technology is 300 years ahead of public imagination. He cites the X-37B military spaceplane, whose missions have run beyond 700 days with undisclosed cargo.
From about 59:45 he separates the shot-down objects from what he considers a genuine probe: the Black Knight satellite, subject of his documentary Black Knight Satellite: Beyond the Signal. He says an STS-88 estimate put it at about 15 tons, that a signal decoded by the NSA points to Epsilon Boötis, and that the Sumerian tablets tie Boötes to Enlil, one of the Anunnaki. The government leaves it alone, he argues, because no one knows whether it has defenses.
The summary (from about 69:02)
Closing, Carson says UFOs are real but the agenda behind the news is fear, which makes people easier to manipulate. If an unknown object ever attacks, he warns: "Odds are, it's not an alien. Odds are, it's us attacking us."
Key takeaways
- Carson accepts the official identification of the February 4 balloon as a Chinese surveillance craft and calls its flight a database update over U.S. missile sites.
- He argues the smaller objects downed afterward were American-made drones, because a genuine interstellar probe would not be shot down so easily.
- He links the shoot-downs to the Space Force and the Pentagon's unaccounted spending, arguing that a threat from the sky creates a new case for funding.
- He predicts staged incidents involving ships or bases and cites the Gulf of Tonkin incident as precedent.
- He still believes advanced visitors are real, but as observers of humanity rather than invaders.
Billy Carson's reading
Carson's position can surprise both camps. He is a committed believer in extraterrestrial visitation, grounded in his reading of ancient texts such as the Enuma Elish and the Sumerian accounts of the Anunnaki, a framework set out with its critics in [Ancient Astronaut Theory Explained](/ancient-astronaut-theory-explained-origins-evidence-and-criticism). Yet that framework is exactly why he rejects an alien explanation for the February 2023 objects: beings that advanced would never lose a probe to a fighter jet within hours.
What remains, for Carson, is a human story. He reasons from incentives, from the gap between official UAP capabilities and the ease of these kills, and from past incidents misrepresented to win support for war. His claims about contractors, long-duration spaceplane missions and hidden programs belong to a wider argument weighed against the documented record in [The Secret Space Program Explained](/the-secret-space-program-explained-real-classified-projects-vs-the-conspiracy-claims). His prescription is not fear but sovereignty: stop handing power to institutions, and treat any future report of an alien attack with suspicion.
What mainstream scholarship says
On the balloon, the official account and Carson's agree. U.S. officials said it belonged to a Chinese military surveillance balloon program that had flown over more than 40 countries; China said it was a civilian weather airship blown off course. An F-22 shot it down off South Carolina on February 4, 2023, the type's first air-to-air kill, and in June 2023 the Pentagon said the balloon had not collected intelligence while crossing the United States.
The three later objects were downed off northern Alaska on February 10, over Canada's Yukon on February 11 and over Lake Huron on February 12. Officials described the Yukon object as cylindrical and the Lake Huron object as an octagonal structure with strings hanging from it, and explained the run of detections partly by NORAD adjusting its radar to catch smaller, slower targets it had previously filtered out. On February 13 the White House said there was no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity, and on February 16 President Biden said the intelligence assessment was that the three were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreational or research institutions. The debris was never recovered, so none was publicly identified.
On the wider claims: the 2021 ODNI preliminary assessment and AARO's 2024 historical report found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology. The Space Force, created in December 2019 largely by redesignating Air Force Space Command, did grow out of an existing command, but no evidence ties the shoot-downs to its budget. Historians accept that the reported August 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin attack did not happen, as an NSA history declassified in 2005 confirms, though the August 2 clash was real. The X-37B is a publicly acknowledged uncrewed spaceplane launched on conventional rockets, and NASA identifies the STS-88 object as a thermal blanket lost during a spacewalk.
Watch, read and go deeper
The full audio is on the podcast episode page. [The UAP Hearings Explained](/the-uap-hearings-explained-2017-2026-what-was-claimed-what-was-proven-and-what-is-next) follows what officials and witnesses have said since 2017. For the hidden-programs side of the argument, read [The Secret Space Program Explained](/the-secret-space-program-explained-real-classified-projects-vs-the-conspiracy-claims), and for the ancient-text foundation of Carson's belief in visitors, [Ancient Astronaut Theory Explained](/ancient-astronaut-theory-explained-origins-evidence-and-criticism). The Enlil and Sumerian threads are collected on [the Anunnaki topic hub](/topics/anunnaki).
Frequently asked questions
Did the US shoot down UFOs in 2023?
The U.S. shot down four objects over North America in February 2023: a Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4 and three smaller unidentified objects on February 10, 11 and 12. The White House said there was no indication of extraterrestrial activity, and President Biden later said the three were most likely commercial or research balloons. Billy Carson agrees they were not alien craft but argues the later three were American-made drones.
What were the objects shot down over Alaska, the Yukon and Lake Huron?
They were never publicly identified because their debris was not recovered. The U.S. intelligence assessment was that they were most likely balloons tied to private companies, hobbyists or research institutions. Carson believes they were experimental U.S. drones shot down as part of a drill.
Was the Chinese balloon really a spy balloon?
The United States said it was part of a Chinese military surveillance program, while China said it was a civilian weather airship that had drifted off course. The Pentagon later said it did not collect intelligence while over the United States.
Does Billy Carson believe in UFOs?
Yes. In this stream he says he fully believes in extraterrestrial visitation, citing the Enuma Elish and the Black Knight satellite. He argues that genuinely advanced visitors observe humanity rather than threaten it, which is why he rejects an alien explanation for the 2023 shoot-downs.
Sources mentioned
Carson cites a USA Today report on the fourth object shot down, a news segment on the Chinese balloon's flight path, a Pentagon briefing on the February 10, 2023 Alaska shoot-down, the AATIP documents and the UAP material released in 2021 and 2022, the declassified record of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Enuma Elish, the Sumerian tablets on Enlil, NASA's STS-88 mission, an NSA document on the Black Knight signal and his documentary Black Knight Satellite: Beyond the Signal. Further reading: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (2021); All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Volume I (2024).
