Intergalactic Summit

Pilots;

As we know, CONCORD tends to hold its cards very close to its chest indeed. However, given the months that have followed the disclosure of CONCORD's formation of a Drifter analysis committee, the Arataka Research Consortium is both directly and publicly petitioning Director Arve Vesren for a statement on the status of the committee, its findings, and any information or intelligence that may better enable us to understand and combat this novel threat.

The full text of the petition sent to Director Arve Vesren is as follows.



Pilots who support this measure are invited to voice their support here, or to ask questions or raise concerns if relevant.

That CONCORD is actively choosing to keep the rest of New Eden in the dark about one of the most significant threats to the safety and security of every single person supposedly under their protection, seemingly just to spite capsuleers, speaks volumes about the self-interested fools in charge.

I support this petition in hopes that I'm wrong and that CONCORD's leadership will have me eating those words.

I support this reasonable petition. We must transcend our political misgivings and openly share all available accurate information so that the best path forward can be charted for the betterment of humankind in New Eden.

The Drifter threat is grave. Any and all findings that might assist us in defeating them should be released.

Signed.

Ruin has come to our cluster. Spacecrafts fare through it and we can't comprehend the technology they utilize. Head of empire gets assassinated and all we can do is watch in shock. This doesn't yet concern planetary population and I hope it stays that way. But here we are, a group of concerned independent capsuleers who want to help overcome this crisis. Capsuleers, help. I feel joy just typing these words together in one sentence.

I am being overly dramatic, but this is how it is.

Jaret Victorian, signed.

Having witnessed and fought the Drifter threat personally more than once, I hope the DED, CONCORD and all of New Eden take heed on the seriousness of this situation.

Signed.

Signed.

Whilst one has to recognise that there may well be significant security implications of which we are unaware, there is clearly a need for more communication on this matter. I can entirely understand why CONCORD, and the Empire representatives therein, might distrust capsuleers and their corporations.

There must be useful information that can be released, however, so I would support this petition.

While I understand releasing information of this scale to the public at large is not usually a recommendable course of action, keeping a primary force in the dark about potentially relevant details does more harm than good at a stage where we may still have agency and leeway to address the future of this conflict. And if we don't, we should know that, too.

Given that the primary force courted for dealing with the Drifter Threat has been Capsuleers - at least, a lot of noise has come in our direction - and Capsuleers are essentially drawn from the general public at the whim of their genes rather than their station or security clearance, I would say this is a conundrum that the powers that be have brought on themselves. While we are immortal, throwing us repeatedly at the problem without reliable intelligence demands the lives of our crew-members and potentially our staff, and can cause a myriad of other complications that are not immediately obvious at the surface level. To maintain the appearance of concern, the powers that be should feel pressured to release a statement.

There aren't a lot of defensible ways to handle this situation other than to release what intelligence they have, come what may, and spin up positive Capsuleer involvement as much as possible. We should be willing to be paraded around if it helps our capabilities.

As for the origin of this petition, I don't think it really matters in such a case. And even if it did, I think the group in question had some reason to be resistant given history with Hilen Tukoss and the project, and it is relevant to remember they were amenable to the authorities essentially immediately. There was only one holdout and it would be worrying if everyone was so unable to expect reasonable communication with the authorities as TomHorn is suggesting. Instead of a dialogue, they received a threat. If anything, this instance makes the authorities look worse than the perpetrators, so I'm not sure it's effective slander against this rather straight-forward petition.

I believe the effort to reclaim Tukoss' body was a rushed job and should have been handled more covertly. The offer of such a ludicrous bounty drew more attention to the situation than was ideal, and served no purpose other than to secure the assets at the expense of trust among crucial allies and potentially damaging press (though it would appear the subsequent spin has been somewhat successful given the comments in this thread). More importantly, I'm not particularly encouraged that the powers that be are prone to panic in such essential situations, and they owe us affirmative action if for no other reason than to repair a still-damaged reputation in this regard. It is not enough to blacken the enemy alone. Even a well placed lie would still be more responsible than silence, my own feelings aside.

Signed.


It is entirely fair and usual to demand a deadline on a external investigation. It is entirely odd such a deadline was not announced concurrently. The committee should not have been announced publicly if no working paper or report was forthcoming in a useful time-frame. The powers that be are not making themselves look efficient - Is it up to us to take control of this situation with what little infrastructure we have? Essentially continue as we have been? When we are the only ones willing to publish information, researched by ours and put into public forum, it is Capsuleers who win the support of a fearful public, and that of wary Capsuleers with less expertise. That is a dangerous power to just hand us.

If the Empires and their consortiums, the traditional powers, keep undercutting themselves, they could lose the critical support they need. It is not far-fetched to say that their behaviour indicates they are not taking the threat that the Drifters pose to our way of life seriously. It may be telling in its own right.

I would be on board if they could start turning this around, but they have been exclusively alienating in their dealings with our group, despite being co-conspirators to our creation. It would be painfully easy to lie to us and make this easy. The question everyone involved is forced to ask now is why not.

As others have noted, the only individual who outright refused the DED's demands (and, furthermore, was even able to do anything about it one way or another) is neither included in the list of this petition's original signatories nor has he posted his support to this petition yet.

Over the last several months working with the Arataka Research Consortium, I've helped lead fleets of otherwise unaffiliated capsuleers into the Drifters' supposed sanctuaries over and over. I've worked with my peers to develop different methods to combat the Drifters in a wide variety of situations. We go out there time after time, risking thousands of crew members, each of whom eagerly signed up because they shared our view of the situation: the Drifters are a serious threat that we must understand and learn to defend against.

Sitting on one's thumbs will accomplish neither of those goals, and as such, these feeble attempts at nay-saying and holding Priano-haani and IKAME to the coals over an old, tired, and most importantly, peacefully resolved incident should be regarded as little more than the petty continuation of a nonsensical smear campaign most here have come to expect from the few remaining Provist capsuleers, and summarily ignored.

Some capsuleers are not the monsters the media likes to make us out to be, disrupting lives and destroying everything we touch. Some of us would rather use our gift - or curse, perhaps - to help and defend people when they cannot do so themselves.

The Arataka Research Consortium represents the latter of those two groups. And thus it will have my continued support.

Signed.
Naoko Kanaka