We can easily make pure logical conclusion that extraterretrial life exists.
Only in Milky Way we have hundred billion stars and it seems that nearly every star have planets. There should be a lot of planets in habitable zones. It is nearly impossible that Earth is only one of millions of similar planets where life developed.
So, even we have no any solid proof of extraterrestrial life, it is absolutely scientifically correct to suppose that it exists.
So, it should be completely normal to discuss the aliens and any questions about them. Just like any other scientific question that still have no experimental proof.
However, nearly everything about 'aliens' is settled as 'science fiction', 'conspiracy', 'fringe science', 'crazy speculation' etc, At least in MSM. At the same time nobody think like that about, say, thermonuclear power plants, string theory, and other things, that are only abstract theories and have no real solid experimental proof.
Why 'aliens' theme is so special?
It's easy. If aliens exists, there should be civilisations that are superior to our. And that directly means, that our authorities, including tptb are not highest authority in the universe. Also, there inevitably comes a potential possibility to escape that earth authorities control for an earth individual. That is completely inadmissible for earth powers.
This thing have direct similarities to the earth things of smaller scale. For example, you have no real possibility to freely choose country of living and/or citizenship. You can't just leave, say, Germany, and become citizen of US, and vice versa. You need a lot of money and obligatory authority consent. Another example - totalitarian authorities, like USSR in the past, North Korea currently, directly prohibit even temporary leaving their borders. Yes, this is possible, but only for specific and very small groups of population. Also, there is no way you can establish a new independent state. Last possibility was immidiately deleted from international laws right after Sealand accident. In no case you can be out of control of some authority on the Earth.
So, Earth authorities do exactly the same thing as, say, North Korea authorities do to their citizens - keep their population under control discarding everyting that could make an individual think that there could be some alternative to the current regular course established by authorities.
Nearly anything that could give a smallest hope to evade from control of authorities for individual is shamed and humiliated. From discussing aliens up to 'consensus' banning any funding for scientific research on FTL, wormholes, antigravity, new energy sources, etc. - nearly any possible technology allowing escape of individual from earth authorities.
Just like that.
Tech can’t ever have free will because it doesn’t have a soul (or connection outside of this universe). Think about a game of super Mario bros. What differentiates Mario from a Goomba? Both are programmed entities inside the game universe. The difference is the outside player. The outside player gives Mario a free will NOT constructed from the logic of the source code. The goomba can never have free will. Even with randomized logic, the goomba is completely predictable (as computers can really generate truly, truly random numbers). But Mario, being guided by an outside player, moved in ways the game universe CANNOT, with certainty, predict. We can’t give a robot that connection. God gave our bodies that connection. I fully believe our bodies are somehow connected to this “soul” which isn’t something that exists in this universe, the same how a game player doesn’t exist in the universe of the game they are playing.
Edit: Hollywood puts this symbolism in their movies (possibly as a wink/nod to each other). Think of movies such as Jumanji, as silly as that sounds.