His thinking is very diverse on the issue; he has not ruled out entirely the ‘ET’ hypothesis. He’s actually pretty noncommittal when it comes to trying to nail this down - and that is in line with his main theme of the necessity of studying all of this scientifically.
I think he meant that the phenomena, historically, often echoed the beliefs that were current during the times when they displayed; and as we have grown more technologically advanced they have taken on the tone of our current cultural references. He recognized an element of - for want of a better word - the ‘psychological’. (I think the ‘control system’ that he suggests could very well be a collectively self-imposed one which is inherent to the development of our consciousness.)
He’s been doing online interviews over the past few years; you might be interested in how his thought developed after his earlier books.
He also has demonstrated a capacity to frame things a little differently in more public forums vs privately.
Both of us believe that the CONTROL FUNCTION Vallee describes is much more than you outlined. We both see Vallee as insisting that the whole of the behavior of the critters and their craft are deliberately structured and calibrated to engineer subtle to not so subtle and wholesale effective control mechanisms on our culture, our society. And the big question is--to what ends.
And on that score the issue of the degree of evil involved is a very important one.
We hope Vallee hasn't been turned 'to the dark side.'