More and more scientists think it’s time to think through the political implications of first contact.

“In the event of contact, things will likely move very quickly, and we may not have the time to carefully vet our reasoning,” said Chelsea Haramia, a philosopher at Spring Hill College in Alabama.

When Kenneth Wisian and John Traphagan, respectively geophysicist and religious-studies experts at the University of Texas, studied the issue back in 2020, they came away more than a little worried.

Their main concern was that whichever country first makes contact with intelligent aliens—by way of a probe or radio broadcast or some other means—might suddenly become the most powerful country ever. Even if it wasn’t very powerful before first contact.

Knowledge of alien technology, “if wielded solely by one nation here on Earth, might enable it to dominate the world,” Wisian and Traphagan wrote in their peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Space Policy.

“Controlling communication with an [extraterrestrial intelligence] could be the biggest ‘prize’ ever in international competition.”

It was an alarming assertion. But not every scientist agreed with it. A team led by Jason Wright, a Penn State astronomer, rebutted Wisian and Taphagan in a different study. Their main point is that the most likely method of contacting aliens is also the easiest and cheapest: radio.

Almost any country with satellite T.V. could use the same basic tech to listen to, and talk back to, aliens. “There are an enormous number of radio dishes designed to communicate with Earth satellites that could easily be repurposed for such an effort,” wrote Wright and his coauthors.

So which group of scientists do you think is right? How will humans respond?