Of all the failures in the Biden administration’s response to thousands of mysterious drone sightings in the mid-Atlantic region — a lax response, see-through explanations, and potential foreign intelligence gathering — Gatestone Institute Fellow Gordon Chang believes the greatest failure is the government’s lack of honesty. “The point here is that the federal government needs to talk to the American people,” said Chang on “Washington Watch” Monday. “I believe President Biden needs to address the American people and tell us what he knows and what he doesn’t know.”

In a joint statement Tuesday morning, the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Federal Aviation Administration assessed the 5,000 reported drone sightings as “a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones.”

But Chang and many others aren’t buying it. “There [are] two alternative explanations,” he said. “One of them is that these are operated by foreigners. If that’s not true, then it’s even more ominous because they’re operated by the U.S. government. Because these are too big, they are too sophisticated to be operated by hobbyists. Then the question is, what is the federal government doing with these drones?”

“Maybe the federal government is looking for a nuclear weapon that has been planted there by a terrorist state,” Chang proposed. The reported drone sightings come amid reports of “significant radiation spikes” in the area around New York City.

“One thing we do know. And that is that, for more than a decade, the federal government has been worried about this very scenario — about North Korea, in particular, taking a nuclear device, tearing it apart, smuggling in the portions of it into the U.S., and then reassembling it in the city of their choice,” he explained. “That’s very well what the federal government may be doing. Whether you believe these are foreign, or whether these are DHS, or CIA, or FBI, there are no good explanations for what’s occurring.”

This is why Chang urged President Biden to level with the American people. “It might cause panic, but I also think the American people are mature enough to understand what’s going on,” he said. “In the absence of information, we have to assume the worst. We need to have the president of the United States talk to us.”

The Biden administration’s response to the drones is “similar” to their response to the Chinese spy balloon they permitted to traverse the entire continental U.S. last February, noted Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice. “Clearly, China saw the failure of not only the U.S. military but also of President Biden and his national security team,” Chang replied, “just a non-response.”

“So I think China then said, ‘Well, look what [we] could do if [we] tried something else.’ And so, we’ve seen a lot of drone penetrations of U.S. military bases by Chinese nationals. So I think Beijing learned a lesson there. And right now, God knows what’s occurring.”

“This could very well be the most dangerous moment in history,” Chang declared. “A lot of people will say that was 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or 1961, the Checkpoint Charlie Crisis in Berlin. But we know from the archives that neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev [was] willing to use their most dangerous weapons. Now, we don’t know that about Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin. And we are seeing a very bold Chinese regime, for instance, and a very bold Russian one. … By the way, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea — yes, they’re evil.”

“The world — in essence, it’s on fire,” Hice responded. “The axis of autocracies led by … Russia and China, Iran, North Korea — all … continue to challenge the democratic world order. … All these countries are flexing their muscles, and none of them really would lead in a [way] that is for the well-being of humanity as a whole.”

“The world is falling apart, and it fell apart under Biden’s watch because he did not understand the use of American power,” Chang declared. “Biden talks about cooperation, friendliness, you know, trying to find ways where we can work with China. Those policies, even though they are soothing, they have created one disaster after another.”

These cascading foreign policy disasters only add further fuel to imaginative speculations about what these unexplained drones are doing on America’s shores, said Hice, including one congressman who suggested the drones were Iranian. “I think that it’s possible that the axis of evil has brought the fight to the United States, because we’re talking about drones, and we don’t know yet whether those drones are foreign or not,” said Chang. “Yes, I know the Pentagon says that they’re not. But there are a number of people in the Air Force, for instance, who believe that a majority of those drones are being operated by foreign powers.”

The Biden administration could clear up these speculations and bad headlines simply by telling the American people what is happening, both Chang and Hice agreed. “There’s panic being created by the silence as well,” said Hice. “If it’s a classified operation, just say so. … But the silence is unacceptable.”