The more I read about the UFO topic the more I believe that you have to take any explanation you may have and multiply by a strangeness factor of about X100.
I think every bullet point you listed is true and happening to some extent. The real discussion needs to be focused on the technology and how to safely transition nearly 8 billion people into a Post-Einsteinian world.
Step one is probably something like make a perfect money so we've got that going for us. But honestly no matter how many citadels in the wild we build, we're still sharing an atmosphere with the likes of Putin, Xi, and Biden.