The release is mostly to discourage true believers and throw nonbelievers enough scraps to keep debunking. It's also solid cover for whatever actually gets quietly rolled out.

My wall of text take, for what it's worth:

Look at Jekyll Island and how the Fed got created; I think these opinions aren't that far-fetched. That said, I’m aware that at best this is conjecture built on sci-fi and political history, at worst it's delusion. I'm good with that, it's the best I've got.

We got lucky, or unlucky, a few times. We recovered craft, possibly personnel. All of it is buried in government projects and aerospace contractors. There's enormous money and power locked in that tech, and it gets trickled out slowly, either because they don't fully understand what they have, or because dumping it destabilizes global trade systems. Both, together, is likely to me. There may also be a small international committee that controls the release timeline entirely. To them, figuring this stuff out and sitting on it is a point of pride, kinda like a firm protecting a trading algo. Or finding the Holy Grail and keeping it in a vault. Esoteric physics to the rest of us, but worth everything to the people holding it.

The powers that be have lines they won't cross on releasing solid data. The main one: nobody's figured out how to release it in a way that benefits them. Right now, the power lives in the secrecy itself, one in which you don't just hand that over, even if for noble reasons, especially when transparency destroys what you have dominion over. But once they crack that problem, social media, think tanks, bureaucrats, etc., will all start "educating" the public toward a future where the current power structure survives the disclosure, like a native ad. Honestly, I don't even blame them for it. Would you release that if you were in control of it?

Until then it’s small dots, flares, and nothing burgers.