{"id":9850,"date":"2023-08-18T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-18T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=9850"},"modified":"2023-08-03T16:31:02","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T16:31:02","slug":"first-contact-with-aliens-could-end-in-colonization-and-genocide-if-we-dont-learn-from-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/first-contact-with-aliens-could-end-in-colonization-and-genocide-if-we-dont-learn-from-history\/","title":{"rendered":"First contact with aliens could end in colonization and genocide if we don\u2019t learn from history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n \n
\n SETI has been listening for markers that may indicate alien life \u2013 but is doing so ethical?\n Donald Giannati via Unsplash<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\nDavid Delgado Shorter<\/a>, University of California, Los Angeles<\/a><\/em>; Kim TallBear<\/a>, University of Alberta<\/a><\/em>, and William Lempert<\/a>, Bowdoin College<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

We\u2019re only halfway through 2023, and it feels already like the year of alien contact. <\/p>\n\n

In February, President Joe Biden gave orders<\/a> to shoot down three unidentified aerial phenomena \u2013 NASA\u2019s title for UFOs. Then, the alleged leaked footage<\/a> from a Navy pilot of a UFO, and then news of a whistleblower\u2019s report<\/a> on a possible U.S. government cover-up about UFO research. Most recently, an independent analysis published in June<\/a> suggests that UFOs might have been collected by a clandestine agency of the U.S. government.<\/p>\n\n

If any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life emerges, whether from whistleblower testimony or an admission of a cover-up, humans would face a historic paradigm shift. <\/p>\n\n

As members of an Indigenous studies working group who were asked to lend our disciplinary expertise to a workshop affiliated with the Berkeley SETI Research Center<\/a>, we have studied centuries of culture contacts and their outcomes from around the globe. Our collaborative preparations for the workshop drew from transdisciplinary research in Australia, New Zealand, Africa and across the Americas. <\/p>\n\n

In its final form, our group statement<\/a> illustrated the need for diverse perspectives on the ethics of listening for alien life and a broadening of what defines \u201cintelligence\u201d and \u201clife.\u201d<\/a> Based on our findings, we consider first contact less as an event and more as a long process that has already begun. <\/p>\n\n

Who\u2019s in charge of first contact<\/h2>\n\n

The question of who is \u201cin charge\u201d of preparing for contact with alien life immediately comes to mind. The communities \u2013 and their interpretive lenses \u2013 most likely to engage in any contact scenario would be military, corporate and scientific. <\/p>\n\n

By giving Americans the legal right to profit from space tourism and planetary resource extraction, the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015<\/a> could mean that corporations will be the first to find signs of extraterrestrial societies. Otherwise, while detecting unidentified aerial phenomena is usually a military matter, and NASA takes the lead on sending messages from Earth<\/a>, most activities around extraterrestrial communications and evidence fall to a program called SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

SETI is a collection of scientists with a variety of research endeavors<\/a>, including Breakthrough Listen, which listens for \u201ctechnosignatures<\/a>,\u201d or markers, like pollutants, of a designed technology<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

SETI investigators are virtually always STEM<\/a> \u2013 science, technology, engineering and math \u2013 scholars. Few in the social science and humanities fields have been afforded opportunities to contribute to concepts of and preparations for contact.<\/p>\n\n

In a promising act of disciplinary inclusion, the Berkeley SETI Research Center<\/a> in 2018 invited working groups \u2013 including our Indigenous studies working group<\/a> \u2013 from outside STEM fields to craft perspective papers for SETI scientists to consider.<\/p>\n\n

Ethics of listening<\/h2>\n\n

Neither Breakthough Listen nor SETI\u2019s site features a current statement of ethics<\/a> beyond a commitment to transparency<\/a>. Our working group was not the first<\/a> to raise this issue. And while the SETI Institute<\/a> and certain research centers<\/a> have included ethics in their event programming, it seems relevant to ask who NASA and SETI answer to, and what ethical guidelines they\u2019re following for a potential first contact scenario. <\/p>\n\n

SETI\u2019s Post-Detection Hub<\/a> \u2013 another rare exception to SETI\u2019s STEM-centrism \u2013 seems the most likely to develop a range of contact scenarios. The possible circumstances imagined include finding ET artifacts, detecting signals from thousands of light years away, dealing with linguistic incompatibility, finding microbial organisms in space or on other planets, and biological contamination of either their or our species. Whether the U.S. government or heads of military would heed these scenarios is another matter. <\/p>\n\n

SETI-affiliated scholars tend to reassure critics<\/a> that the intentions of those listening for technosignatures are benevolent, since \u201cwhat harm could come from simply listening?\u201d The chair emeritus of SETI Research, Jill Tarter, defended listening<\/a> because any ET civilization would perceive our listening techniques as immature or elementary. <\/p>\n\n

But our working group drew upon the history of colonial contacts to show the dangers<\/a> of thinking that whole civilizations are comparatively advanced or intelligent. For example, when Christopher Columbus and other European explorers came to the Americas, those relationships were shaped by the preconceived notion<\/a> that the \u201cIndians\u201d were less advanced due to their lack of writing<\/a>. This led to decades of Indigenous servitude<\/a> in the Americas. <\/p>\n\n

\n \"A<\/a>\n
\n This 16th century engraving shows Christopher Columbus landing in the Americas, where he and his explorers deemed the Indigenous people there as \u2018primitive,\u2019 as they had no writing system.<\/span>\n Theodor de Bry\/Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

The working group statement also suggested that the act of listening is itself already within a \u201cphase of contact<\/a>.\u201d Like colonialism itself, contact might best be thought of as a series of events that starts with planning, rather than a singular event. Seen this way, isn\u2019t listening potentially without permission just another form of surveillance? To listen intently but indiscriminately seemed to our working group like a type of eavesdropping<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

It seems contradictory that we begin our relations with aliens by listening in without their permission while actively working to stop other countries from listening to certain U.S. communications<\/a>. If humans are initially perceived as disrespectful or careless, ET contact could more likely lead to their colonization of us<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Histories of contact<\/h2>\n\n

Throughout histories of Western colonization, even in those few cases when contactees were intended to be protected, contact has led to brutal violence, pandemics, enslavement and genocide. <\/p>\n\n

James Cook\u2019s 1768 voyage on the HMS Endeavor was initiated by the Royal Society<\/a>. This prestigious British academic society charged him with calculating the solar distance between the Earth and the Sun by measuring the visible movement of Venus across the Sun from Tahiti. The society strictly forbade him from any colonial engagements. <\/p>\n\n

Though he achieved his scientific goals, Cook also received orders<\/a> from the Crown to map and claim as much territory as possible on the return voyage. Cook\u2019s actions put into motion wide-scale colonization and Indigenous dispossession across Oceania, including the violent conquests of Australia and New Zealand<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

\n \"A<\/a>\n
\n The 1768 voyage of British captain James Cook, center, put into motion wide-scale colonization and Indigenous dispossession across Oceania.<\/span>\n John Hamilton Mortimer via the National Library of Australia<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

The Royal Society gave Cook a \u201cprime directive<\/a>\u201d of doing no harm and to only conduct research that would broadly benefit humanity. However, explorers are rarely independent from their funders, and their explorations reflect the political contexts of their time. <\/p>\n\n

As scholars attuned to both research ethics and histories of colonialism, we wrote about Cook in our working group statement to showcase why SETI might want to explicitly disentangle their intentions from those of corporations, the military and the government<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

Although separated by vast time and space, both Cook\u2019s voyage and SETI share key qualities, including their appeal to celestial science in the service of all humanity. They also share a mismatch between their ethical protocols and the likely long-term impacts of their success.<\/p>\n\n

\n