J Randall Murphy
Trying To Stay Awake
I think that initially there was fear that the UFO phenomenon would cause some sort of panic, or be used by adversaries to flood our missile detection systems; folks were threatened, sometimes by MIBS (CIA folks). Then it was realized that sheeple just don't care about the phenomenon like they used to; they have become desensitized by all of the BS and smokescreens from the government and others over the years. Today, unless UFOs interfere with your Amazon Prime delivery, or interrupt your game of Halo, you probably don't care, so no need to threaten folks etc. Just spoon feed more blurry footage of drones to hardcore skeptics, until folks fall into a stupor and throw their hands up in the air.
That pretty much sums up the situation today. Unless the aliens themselves come down and start offering public mothership tours — fewer and fewer people are going to care much one way or the other. It's gone back to being niche topic for space nerds.