Hundreds of drones are reportedly descending over northern New Jersey. Residents have filmed them, mayors have complained about them, and an appallingly quiet federal response has led Americans across the country to offer wild speculations about their origins, with everyone from leftists to military contractors and conservative lawmakers chiming in on the issue.
A TikTok video by John Ferguson, the CEO of drone manufacturer Saxon Aerospace, was amplified by Joe Rogan on Sunday, with the podcaster remarking that it was the first conspiracy about the aerial machines that had him “genuinely concerned.”
Ferguson didn’t believe that the “small-car sized” drones indicated any “nefarious intent” but suggested that “the only reason why they would be flying, and flying that low, is because they’re trying to smell something on the ground,” suggesting that the drones could be looking for gas or radioactive material.
“Now drones, they have no reason to be in the air at night. Unless you’re doing some type of ISR work—intelligence surveillance reconnaissance you know, looking for bad guys or a search and rescue victim,” Ferguson continued. “The only reason why you would ever fly an unmanned aircraft at night is if you’re looking for something, whether it be a person, or trying to smell gas.”
Commercial-grade drones were first spotted lingering over sections of northern New Jersey in mid-November, sparking an FBI investigation into the aerial gathering. At a Wednesday briefing between the office of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and the Department of Homeland Security, mayors from the region lamented that no one from state or federal agencies had been able to tell them exactly how many drones were flying over the state, with estimates ranging from 400 to thousands, according to NBC News.
Nick Ribaudo, a self-described “leftist Ben Shapiro” and media critic, also joined in on the conspiracy conversation on TikTok, posting a skit on Sunday that highlighted the spontaneous rise in drone activity around the same time that UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s assassination was bringing Americans together across party lines.
“Sure seems like we could be doing a lot more if we were a unified working class,” Thompson joked in a video that drew more than 1.6 million views and nearly 300,000 likes.
The drone sightings have also breathed fresh air into some of the most outlandish conspiracies from the last several decades, including the so-called Project Blue Beam, a theory invented in the 1990s by Canadian Serge Monast that claimed a cabal of the world’s most powerful people were projecting images into the sky to induce fear and confusion among the masses. Images could include alien invasions, religious figures, or, in this case, hundreds of drones inexplicably patrolling New Jersey.
Politicians also joined the chorus on the drones, with some stoking fears that the sky gathering was a visitation from a foreign adversary.
New Jersey Republican Representative Jeff Van Drew suggested to Fox News on Wednesday that the drones were coming from an Iranian “mothership”—a claim that the Pentagon quickly shot down.
“There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said the same day.
Other Republicans also, perhaps a little overzealously, pointed to foreign actors as the reason behind the New Jersey drone takeover.
“The elusive maneuvering of these drones suggests a major military power sophistication that begs the question whether they have been deployed to test our defense capabilities—or worse—by violent dictatorships, perhaps maybe Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea,” Republican Representative Chris Smith told reporters on Saturday.
Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene also got in on the drone action last week, claiming in a video rant on her X account that the government’s continued inability to ID the strange lights hovering over the Garden State was “total bullshit” that put every American “in danger.” She has since claimed that the federal government is controlling the drones.