Not really, although I wasn’t considering that. I think it will be the case because sooner or later the nuclear war threat will be at a high point again, just as it happened during the cold war. The UFO craze was fed by the US MIC in order to both cover their military research and development run in secret and to help build the cultural red scare of the second half of the 20th century. It was a part of cold war propaganda. With a world view where the aliens are hostile and want to destroy America, the “other” was built. Then, the jump to otherize the Soviets was easily made.

Obviously, I’m not saying it was aliens. But it was aliens.

I mean, it was just one of the fronts of the cold war, but it got so entrenched in western culture that nowadays there is very rarely any cultural expression in which space visitors aren’t just the US but in space fighting the real US or the World™. All aliens are hostile, murderous, and the other.

Hell, even in one of the only american movies I’ve seen in which extraterrestrials don’t want to destroy humanity they are used to print scare in the audicence. To make them fear China, or peace, or peace with China. Cultural expression gets feedback from social anxieties.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the cultural other was incarnated by monsters. Then by aliens. And with the fall of the Soviet Union Hollywood ran out of powerful declared enemies, thus we get movies like Independence Day, where the threat is won over very easily. And after massive devastation the American Empires remains in place. The Fukuyamaist vision of the end of history. But then with the war on terrorism the other are the terrorists. And now, engaged in a second Cold War, the enemy of the United States is a peer competitor (China), and the old enemy (Russia). Thus, the plots are about heroism and liberal bs, and you have Marvel to fill that whole. But there are still aliens, so we come full circle.

TL;DR: Cold War 2.0 propaganda. That is, if it doesn’t heat up. Like, nuclear hot.