Peeling away the lies.  This is RJ Axton and you are on the Vector

Thargoids.  The bogeymen of the black.  A mysterious race of aliens that no sane person has ever seen. Over the next few weeks, we explore who the Thargoids are, why they are here, and why you should be afraid.
Folks, let me cut straight to the point. The Thargoids are not aliens. You are being LIED too by the Federation.  The existence of this idea, that there are space boogiemen, is a convenient answer to all of the little inconvenient questions that arise from a corrupt government.  Skeptical?  Well, let's pull that thread and see what unravels.
Jasmina Hasley.  3300, declares Onionhead to be illegal.  News that came to the surprise to powerful organizations within the Federation that earned trillions every year from its sales.  3301, one failure after another, incorrectly attacks a convoy of 10k federal civilians, loses the Lugh war, frontier systems begin to leave the Federation in droves.  Clearly those in power are none too happy with her tenure as president.  Elections are costly my friends, wouldn’t it be a lot easier if she just disappeared?  May 26 3301, Hasley AND her vp trot onto a ship and poof. Gone, nice and tidy. 
Most of a year goes by, 3302 now. The vacuum of her loss is filled with a much more business friendly puppet. Things settle down.  One day, it finally dawns on the cattle people of Federal space… HEY?!?  Wasn’t it, perhaps, a little TOO CONVENIENT that Hasley just disappeared? My, my, maybe there is some hope for them yet. 
I ask you, my intelligent friends, what is more likely?  That a corrupt, militant, government put its inconvenient eggs in one basket and blew it out of the sky?  Or that boogiemen came from the stars, happened on the ONE ship containing the blemish on the bottom line and pulled it out of witchspace using its alien technology, then politely left without so much as an abduction? A probing?!? POD PEOPLE?  I think you know the answer.
Thargoids do exist.  They have nice offices in Nanomam.
Next time on the Vector we’ll pull the thread a little more with these so-called barnacles and how to start a war, on the cheap.
Information submitted by retired Headmaster LocNor.