The one explanation for those mysterious drones no one is talking about: ROGUE AI

Where did they come from? Do they belong to us? Iran? China? Other worlds?

Are they looking for something? Preparing for something? Distracting us from a real problem?

These are the questions we still don’t have answers to after nearly a month of repeated drone sightings in New Jersey.

We’ve heard every kind of theory out there — except for one, says Steve Deace.

In his search for answers, Steve phoned FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend, who then reached out to a close source — a guy with “40 years of intel experience in the Marines, Navy, NSA, and FBI.”

Friend told Deace that his source “is not prone to tinfoil hat theories.”

“He poked holes in every potential explanation I asked him about,” Friend wrote.

But there’s one theory he can’t seem to poke holes in — “sentient AI that our government lost control over and doesn't know how to respond [to].”

“In other words, Skynet is possibly self-aware,” says Deace.

“'Terminator' movie. Cool,” says Todd Erzen.

Deace, who’s approached this drone mystery much like one would try to hack into a safe — trying all the code combinations in the hopes that you hear a click — says that this theory is only the “non-malevolent origin story” that makes any sense.

“It would make a lot of their statements make sense,” he says. “You certainly are not going to be eager to admit to the rest of the world we cannot control an element of our own armed forces.”

To get a second opinion on this theory, Steve reached out to his “military hero” friend who just retired from his role as a “DOD intelligence analyst.”

Not only was he not surprised by the theory, he told Deace that “they knew [rogue AI] was a possibility.”

“At the air operation school I recently consulted with, we were very leery of AI. We saw benefits in the Combat Plans division with giving it our target nomination list in air operations directly and using AI to come up with a master air attack plan, but our greatest concern was using AI on the Combat Operations division floor…We could allow AI to come up with a dynamic target mission without giving it permission to execute it, but what if it went rogue on us, like Hal [9000] or War Games, and starts sending orders to hit targets on the no strike list or restricted target list? Or it comes up with its own targets,” he wrote in his response.

To hear more on this hushed theory, watch the episode above.

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