If extraterrestrial, sapient alien life has been discovered here on Earth by the US government it was probably uncovered via signals intelligence gathering. Not via any sort of physical interaction or visual observation.

Everyone thinks that to find aliens you need to search the skies, looking for visual evidence or radio patterns. No one bothers to think that a mass surveillance network across the globe would pick it up first—from local sources. Meaning: They’re already here and could have been for hundreds of thousands of years (or longer).

There’s probably an autonomous alien monitoring station broadcasting information about Earth on the regular. Probably more than one.

Exactly the type of thing that would be investigated by signals intelligence analysts who spend their days trying to figure out, “WTF was that?” Looking at data gathered from all over the world (for spying reasons).

That’s why Obama would laugh at the question of, “where are the aliens?” Because he wouldn’t know! He’d just know that they’re here… Somewhere. Probably just super advanced machines, connected to a quantum-level universe-wide network.

The real question to ask is, “are they enjoying our memes?”