In the video…

• UAP Status is a tiered system of common narratives in the UAP discourse today.

• Your Status is determined by how you talk about and engage the UAP topic, not necessarily what you believe (details in the video).

• We can track Disclosure by measuring critical shifts in the conversation indicated by increases in UAP Status.

• Several members of Congress are engaging at Status 4 and Status 5, the highest tiers.

My next video will illustrate the concept more with some powerful examples.

-Paul

September 9, 2025, Washington, DC.

A congressional hearing on UAP, whistleblowers, and government conspiracy is in session. The panel is made of five people, including three firsthand witnesses of UAP, all of them with military backgrounds, one journalist, and one lawyer. This is the third congressional committee hearing with UAP witnesses, with the previous two occurring in 2023, and 2024.

UAP eyewitness Dylan Borland, and acclaimed journalist George Knapp have just testified how the US government publicly discusses UAP as extraterrestrial. Representative from Tennessee Tim Burchett makes a follow up comment.

“If you took an Indian or a Harley to the people that came over here on the Mayflower, you know, they’d see a bright shiny object. They might polish it. They might get it started. I doubt they could. They couldn’t work on it. They wouldn’t have the capability of putting fuel in it. I just think that that’s, you know, we’re just, we’re scratching at something that we don’t have any knowledge of and that’s why it’s just taken so dadgum long. But they do know the first one that cracks that code, it’s over. I mean, it’s energy, it’s power, it’s everything.”

Burchett was speaking in the context of crash retrievals of alien craft, a topic that has been in the UAP lore for a long time, and one that has been discussed in congressional hearings since 2023.

Burchett is not a scientist or an expert in the UAP space. He’s a Christian who’s faith isn’t threatened by the existence of non-human intelligence, and he’s one of the most vocal members of Congress about UAP.

Burchett is a regular guy with a disarming midwestern demeanor. He speaks plainly and sometimes he rides a skateboard to the Hill.

On April 6, Burchett proposed the termination of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which, if enacted, would move all of its functions under the discretion of the Secretary of Defense. Burchett is also one of a few members of Congress who have spoken directly to Trump about disclosing American secrets regarding UAP. Burchett believes the president should disclose the truth.

In all practicality, a disclosure announcement by Trump or any president would be more of a political tool than a scientific revelation. For one, the phenomenon is very old. US newspapers have reported UAP for over a century, and the US Air Force has contended with UAP since the day it was established under the National Security act in 1947. The phenomenon is global, and cases take a huge variety of forms. A single televised disclosure announcement would only have time for a keyhole view of the facts, and short term policies enacted by a one or two-term president would likely lead to more harm than good for long term understanding.

I’ve written about what a Trump Disclosure would look like, as well as constructive ways to discern against it.

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Are We Actually Serious About Crash Retrievals?

Most experts in the UAP topic take this part of the phenomenon seriously. Obviously not all cases have equal validity, and some have more witnesses and evidence than others, but the phenomenon is real, and it leaves witnesses, paper trails, human health effects, physical trace evidence, and enormous amounts of otherwise inexplicable circumstantial evidence.

There is no single authoritative catalog of UFO crash retrieval cases. In the absence of that, I’d recommend UAP Gerb’s independent investigations.

Recent activity with the crash retrieval narrative include Jacob Barber’s account, covered extensively by Ross Coulthart and Jesse Michels in the past few years.

James Lacatski of the Defense Intelligence Agency and program manager of AAWSAP, has stated publicly that government officials have been inside at least one of these craft.

Beyond today’s mainstream narrative of crash retrievals there is Leonard Stringfield’s archives written from 1978-1994.

If this narrative of reverse engineered crash retrievals has any truth, then there is an enormous gap of existential knowledge between those who know and accept their existence, and the rest of us who don’t. For further reading on this essential class difference, I would highly recommend Catherin Austin Fitts’ work on black budgets- the economic engines that power clandestine work, as well as Richard Dolan’s text on the “Breakaway Civilization”, the group that benefits from this otherworldly advanced technology.

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The Incentives are Out There

In today’s growing techno-fascist surveillance economy, being the sole controller of technology 50 years ahead of the current state of the art sounds like a holy grail. Consider today’s race towards artificial general intelligence. Founders of Anthropic and Google Deepmind admit the race to build AGI comes at the cost of consumer safety and ethics. AI models today are long term strategic tools of national security, and Sam Altman has described his work as today’s Manhattan Project. The spending is astronomical, and the shared mindset is along the lines of “If we don’t control the first artificial general intelligence, someone else will”. An AGI constructed from large language models would not be human, yet it would be used and trusted to do incredible tasks for its owners. Tech entrepreneurs don’t care if their miracles are delivered by things that aren’t human. They move forward regardless.

It may be no surprise, but today’s tech leaders have serious opinions on UAP or non-human intelligence. Dario Amodei, founder of Anthropic talks about the 1997 film Contact as a valuable analogy for encountering something truly new like AGI. Palmer Luckey, head of Anduril has expressed interest in UAP, specifically USOs (underwater submerged objects) with an ancient undersea origin. Elon Musk’s public opinion on UFOs has grown with the development of SpaceX, although he still closes his statements with jokes. Peter Thiel’s investment capital has funded Enigma Labs, a UAP tracking and database app. Anna Brady-Estevez of American Deep Tech and the National Science Foundation is possibly the most illuminating voice on the enterpreneurial perspective on UAP. She is an exemplar of not requiring mainstream scientific or political consensus (that UAP exist) as a prerequisite to innovate and fund long-term projects.

“If you’re building the highest performing systems what type of resources would you put in place? So if we look at… and I’m sharing kind of casually googled numbers so you can we can get to better definition… but how much money went into the ISS, our long-term in-space laboratory? Some of the numbers online say that it was well over 70 billion for the US part of that and with other nations contributions it might be 150 billion. What was the cost of the Apollo program? That was 26 billion, from the ‘60s to the 70s. Some estimates put that at inflation adjusted well well over 200, perhaps $250 billion. So, if you were to ask me today, what is the right amount of money to be investing in these ultra high-performing technologies, these Manhattan style projects? It’s well into the hundreds of billions of dollars. That’s the right answer today. Whether the US makes that investment or whether somebody else does, we are talking about advantage for multi- trillion dollar markets.”

Anna Brady Estevez at the UAP Disclosure Fund in 2025.

How Advanced is UAP Technology?

Some ideas are too big for us. H.P. Lovecraft’s work describes cosmic beings too large to comprehend, and exposure to them results in insanity. Author qntm’s There is No Antimemetics Division is a more recent book that explores similar entities that are impossible to process with your human brain alone (memory manipulation through medication and strict protocol are required).

A more academic precedent for future tech comes from Harold Puthoff and his contracted Defense Industrial Reference Documents (DIRDs). Puthoff’s company EarthTech International was contracted by Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Space Studies (BAASS) to commission unclassified papers from experts around the world to predict where their fields of study would be in 2050. The reasoning was that if UAP used technology built by an advanced intelligence, the best method of approach would be to get the current state of “aerospace futures”, rather than the current state of aerospace tech.

The DIRDs were part of the legacy of AATIP and AAWSAP, the 2008-2009 Defense Intelligence Agency program whose primary purpose was to investigate UAP from a potential technological threat perspective. The DIRDs are fascinating reads, and they suggest that UAP are not just a phenomenon to be studied- they are a superior force to be examined and exploited. The DIRDs include white papers on spacetime metric engineering, traversable wormholes, invisibility cloaking, and much much more.

Link to the Defense Industrial Reference Documents Collection

The Intelligence Differential

Thanks to our historical record, we have seen an incredibly wide spectrum of human knowledge and intelligence. It’s difficult to imagine how some of our technological achievements today would be interpreted hundreds of years ago.

We might consider how impossible the very concept of a mobile phone would be to people of antiquity. A genius-level intellect of the era would mean little, yet in the far future, Davinci’s own species would go on to build that very device that puzzled him.

Theoretically, the iPhone could exist in the 16th century. The raw material existed on Earth, and the laws of physics were the same then as they are in 2026. One could make the argument that the only thing holding back DaVinci from slowly reverse-engineering the iPhone is knowledge. It would take 500 years until the scientific understanding was mature enough, but the iPhone would eventually be built.

What would DaVinci think when he learned that the iPhone was a common device? That there were multiple variations made over time, each with a slightly different form and function. They weren’t built by a single genius, but by a vast network of mostly automated processes. The one he held would be just one of billions.

UAP Status is a labor of love and an optimistic view on a topic that rarely gets one. Paid subscriptions support me directly, and unlock special access to all articles read aloud by me and not a synthetic AI voice. Thanks for reading!

-Paul

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August 26, 2024

My brother and I were taking photos in the Bisti Badlands. It was a stop on a road trip through New Mexico and I wanted to see the amazing landscape.

The area was lit with moonlight, and the closest lights around us were from a cluster of buildings far off in the distance. I was looking up every now and then and I saw a couple of shooting stars.

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The UFO

Around 12:01am, I saw an orange dot almost directly above me. It appeared in the sky the size of my smallest fingernail at arm’s length.

Over the span of two seconds, the orange dot moved from directly overhead to about 30 degrees towards the horizon in front of me, and then vanished with no other movement. The only sound I could hear was a faint machine noise from the buildings far off, and a very gentle breeze.

There were only a few things I could tell about the object. I knew its appearance, its angular size, its visible duration, and I knew that it was silent. I didn’t know its actual size, distance, speed, and its direction (I could have determined its direction at the time, but I don’t recall it now).

Angular size is measured in degrees and fractions of degrees called arcminutes and arcseconds. One arcminute is 1/60 of one degree, and one arcsecond is 1/60 of one arcminute. The object had an angular size approximately equal to the moon, which is about 0.5 degrees or 30 arcminutes in diameter.

There is a range of possible combinations of distance and size the object could have. For something to appear the same size as the moon in the sky, it could have been about 0.87 meters long (a large yoga ball) at 100 meters away, to 87 meters long (almost a football field) at 10 kilometers away, or a combination in between.

This Angular Size Calculator will do the math between object size, distance, and angular size.

Criteria of a UFO

There are only so many man made objects that can float or fly, so it’s rare to find one that doesn’t fit into known parameters. The Five Observables list describes performance traits of UFOs and UAP that separate them from known flying objects. The list was introduced by Lue Elizondo, a DoD official who helped establish the threat narrative of UAP that we see today in the mainstream press. The observables don’t include things like lens bokeh, atmospheric phenomena, or non-solid objects. It’s more useful as a guide to tell if the object is a known aircraft or something else.

The Five Observables of UAP

1. Positive Lift- Objects maintain altitude, hover, or maneuver with no evident aerodynamic control surfaces (wings/rotors) or thermal exhaust plumes consistent with known propulsion.

2. Instant Acceleration- The object exhibits abrupt, high-G changes in velocity or direction beyond the performance envelopes of known aircraft, apparently without the transitional behaviors (banking, energy bleed) seen in aerodynamic flight.

3. Hypersonic Velocities without Signatures- Apparent Mach 5+ (or otherwise extreme) velocities without sonic booms or thermal/ionization signatures normally associated with such speeds in the atmosphere.

4. Low Observability or Signature Management- Objects appear to minimize radar cross-section, infrared, optical, and/or RF signatures, sometimes evading tracking or presenting as low-contrast/low radar cross-section targets while still maneuvering with high performance.

5. Transmedium Travel- Objects operate seamlessly across air, space, and water (or pass from air to water) without visible performance penalty or transition signature.

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What I Observed

Positive Lift- Observed

• The object appeared as a sphere or near sphere shape with no visible wings, rotors, or other flight surfaces.

• There was almost no wind at ground level. If the object was propelled by wind (like a balloon), the wind speed was significantly different at the object’s altitude.

Instant Acceleration- Not observed

• The object made no turns or noticeable changes in acceleration.

Hypersonic Velocities without Signatures- Not observed

• The object did not move at a hypersonic speed (unless it was enormously large and at a vast distance).

Low Observability or Signature Management- Possibly observed

• The object was clearly visible from the ground.

• The object was emitting light evenly across it’s entire visible surface. This made it difficult to determine details, depth, or complex form of the object.

• The object was silent.

• The object disappeared instantly- possibly by turning off its light source or otherwise disappearing from view.

Transmedium Travel- Not observed

• The object was only viewed in the air.

Other Notes

• Illegal Non-Regulation Lights- The object did not have FAA required position lights or collision lights. Both types of lights are legally required when flying at night.

• An Unlikely Prosaic Explanation- If the object was an internally lit balloon, it was moving extremely fast without wind I could feel at ground level, and it had nothing directly under it to obstruct the view of the evenly lit surface. If the balloon was in tow from another aircraft, I didn’t see or hear that aircraft at all.

Orbs are Common

Orbs, spheres, and other round lights in the sky are some of the most common sightings people report. One woman I spoke to in October of 2024 recognized my story and showed me a video that her mother recorded of a white orb moving in the sky that looked like the one I saw.

The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has thousands of cataloged eyewitness reports of various shapes of UFOs. NUFORC also receives hundreds of reports every month from around the world. January had the most in 2025 with 581 reports, while the lowest amount reported that year was in December with 259. Many reports include photos, videos, or witness illustrations. Certainly not all cases are exotic phenomena, but it’s hard to imagine such a consistent stream of data is 100% hoaxes and misrepresentations of normal objects.

Most light sources (lasers excluded) radiate in a round shape, so it makes sense that many of the luminous shapes seen at night are circles, orbs, ovals, etc. Witnesses don’t always see the shape of the craft in the darkness, they may only see its light sources. In my case, I saw an evenly lit orange surface, not a point source with a bright center and dimmer edge.

Link to the NUFORC Image Gallery

Since seeing the orange dot UFO, I’ve seen two instances of SpaceX rocket debris burning up in the atmosphere, and they were far more spectacular. Both times I saw them as I was camping in California less than 100 miles from Vandenberg Space Force Base where they are launched. Both times the debris streaked across a lateral 90 degrees of the sky over a duration of about 2 minutes. This video looks almost identical to both events that I saw.

While I hope to someday see more UFOs, I’m not expecting to. The phenomenon defies scientific observation because it isn’t predictable and reproduceable, among other things. Ironically I was out in the badlands to take photos, yet in the moment I saw it, I didn’t want to pull out my camera. I don’t remember if I had my camera in-hand at the time, but even if I did, having two seconds to frame it and shoot it is no time at all, especially since I didn’t expect it, and I didn’t know how long it would be visible.

Photos of UFOs today unfortunately are not very convincing. Any photo you find on the internet can be plausibly generated with AI or edited to look like anything at all, and videos aren’t much better. We’re in a weird situation where any image, digital or printed, is potentially fake, and in a world that weighs the possibility of exotic phenomena vs doctored imagery, the doctored imagery always comes out on top.

The phenomenon doesn’t start or end with photos. There’s a good chance that if I did photograph the object, it would have looked exactly how I described it- an orange dot in the sky. What good would that have done? Photos alone just leave people with more questions, but maybe that’s exactly the point. Imagery isn’t the destination, it’s the journey. Photos won’t tell you what the object is, they only get you to ask more questions. And if you’re a curious person, they propel you forward.

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If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you?

This is the tagline for Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, an upcoming film about the global revelation of non-human intelligence. Is this a horror movie?

The vibe is cryptic, but nothing screams horror, not the title, the fonts, the music, or anything overt in the trailer. The only overt indicator is one word- frighten. What is there to be frightened of?

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At the forefront of the UAP conversation, there is a larger discussion about top-down disclosure having a Christian bias, or at least coming from Christian-influenced sources. In the Age of Disclosure (2025), former director of the UAP Task Force Jay Stratton talks about his superiors in the US government who suppress the UAP subject due to it being “demonic”.

“I had to deal with people who were senior to me who were telling me in their world that these are demons, and we are poking demons and messing in Satan’s world and all these other things. I was like, I can’t believe this is coming out of your mouth. I’m briefing about an advanced aerospace vehicle that has been detected on multiple sensors that is absolutely there, and you’re telling me that you think these are demons and that we shouldn’t look at them and study them”.

And of course, the US is in a phase of Christian nationalism at the same time Trump and his Secretary of Defense have stated they will disclose knowledge of aliens, UFOs and UAP.

Disclosure of non-human intelligence may indeed cause a crisis of faith for many people, and more importantly, it may harm the power structures that govern them. While that’s an important topic itself, I want to stay grounded and cut to the core issue that has likely prevented disclosure, and reinforced institutional stigma over UFOs and non-human intelligence over the past century.

Fear.

Let’s not beat around the bush. How can we confront fear like adults?
How can we constructively, responsibly accept a reality of NHI, if it is revealed to us?

The Spider Metaphor

A revelation of non-human intelligence could bring out a variety of emotional reactions.

Imagine if you’ve never seen a spider before. A teacher, a family member, or someone you trust says that spiders have eight legs, they are venomous, and feed on insects. They tell you that spiders are a vital part of the Earth’s ecosystem. Then your trusted source shows you some renderings of various species of spiders. She shows you a video of a spider spinning a web. “This is one thing spiders are uniquely known for”. You are seeing the spider move in full motion video for the first time. What is your reaction?

Now imagine if your trusted source tells you that spiders are venomous to humans. Their bites range from being itchy to life-threatening.

“They make webs that get in your face. My backyard is full of them in the spring and I have to watch out for them. My husband kills them on site when I ask him to”.

Then she shows you a video of a spider wrapping up a fly and eating it. How would your reaction be different?

Fears are learned from experience. As adults, given the opportunity, we can often choose how to react to new things we expose ourselves to. We can choose our own narratives and choose what we celebrate and vilify. More importantly, we can choose who to trust, and who to ask for more information.

If we know only a few facts about spiders, who do we seek out to learn from? The entomologist, or the exterminator?

Today, our media landscape chooses our teachers for us. We are exposed to far too many new subjects to truly understand them. We let others curate our opinions for us, and due to lack of time, we have no choice but to take them at their word. Our trusted sources are often outside our own communities, and our communication with them is unidirectional. They are people on screens, and their paychecks come from entertainment studios and news organizations and brands, each of whom have their own interests. They work for the paycheck, not for you.

The revelation of NHI will undoubtedly benefit some of these brands more than others, and there will be competing narratives about what they are. The tough part for us consumers is that we can’t tell a brand’s intentions and values from its products or its marketing. Nestle has a lot more baggage behind it than snack foods and bottled water. Apple is a much greater force in the world beyond its quantity of products in use every day.

The most successful brands create their own customer demand for their products through planned obsolescence and powerful marketing campaigns. Brands have an existential incentive to ensure their customers’ trust and continued business. Everything else, including truth, is secondary.

In case the metaphor isn’t clear enough, we can seamlessly substitute this “brand” for any culture or any religion.

Can we trust ourselves to form our own opinions? Can we let NHI define itself in our lives? This is how biologists classify new species. Science and wisdom tell us that we can record a more accurate view of an organism when we let it define itself- ideally when we don’t interfere with its natural behavior. Can we let NHI define itself, rather than impose our own existing biases on it? Or do we need films like Disclosure Day and a religious disclosure message to define it for us, and plant the seed of fear into the mind of the American consumer?

Maybe the real question is simpler. Have we successfully done this in the past? Can we trust ourselves to look at something entirely new, without imposing our own bias- despite all the forces around us selling us their narratives?

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It seems that just like Artificial Intelligence, our discourse around NHI holds up a mirror to our own behavior. Thank you for reading all the way here.

If you like this article, I’m coming out with another one along the same lines that goes into M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs (2002), and the powerfully effective methods he used to make aliens scary.

In 2017 we had To the Stars Academy, the infamous New York Times article about UFOs, the formation of the UAP Task Force and then four years of Congressional hearings, the Sol Foundation, and many more sources have added tons of exposure and legitimacy to the topic. The Age of Disclosure documentary was the cherry on top of the “UAP as national security threat” narrative.

Now we’re entering a new phase. The amorphous narrative we have now- where there are more opinions about UAP than people who talk about them- is about to collapse. The more inclusive idea of UAP is going to coalesce because there might be a single authoritative source. The President.

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At the moment, below is the most concise recap of the situation I can find. It includes

• Obama’s affirmative response that aliens are real.

• Trump’s claim that Obama revealed classified information and hint at declassifying alien life.

• Lara Trump’s comments that the president might disclose.
  

  

In the last few days, Trump has found a new flavor of discord. Aliens. He’s now in the position kill two birds with one stone. He can one-up his long time rival, president Obama, and distract the country from the Epstein investigation.

The good news is that most smart people who aren’t informed about the larger UAP conversation are not going to take Trump at his word.

The scary part is that in this era of confusion and low trust, people are hungry for meaning, and to many, an announcement of non-human intelligence (NHI) is going to feel like relief. We aren’t alone! Thank goodness there is a greater paradigm than living in this lopsided economy that rewards sociopathic thinking.

The scary thing about this is that there are going to be many well-meaning but uninformed people who will jump on a Disclosure message and believe it because they want to. I certainly want to. But the UAP subject will not just be potentially misrepresented by Trump. It will be misrepresented by multiple intelligence agencies who are masters of public messaging, and have led academia and the public away from the truth about UAP through classification and disinformation.

NHI disclosure- especially if it comes from the White House could be an important step in a larger plan of distracting the public from the crimes we have good visibility on now. The Epstein files. Trump’s illegal attacks in the Caribbean. Peter Thiel, who is also implicated in the Epstein files, has an enormous hand of cards to play with his company Palantir and other VC funded organizations like Enigma Labs (a crowdsourced database where users upload smartphone images of UAP). Thiel has enormous influence to pull strings and frame a disclosure message that will suck the oxygen from the room just long enough for key players to safely evade justice from any Epstein related investigation.

Alternatively and possibly the worst case scenario, Thiel’s forces could shorten Trump’s presidency just enough to promote JD Vance to disclose NHI. What would legitimize a puppet Vance presidency more than unifying the country around a Reaganesque alien threat?

This might sound extreme, but look where we are now. Could you have predicted any of this a few years ago? There’s no precedent for the Epstein cover up, or the race to AGI, or the current status of UAP discourse. I would argue that we shouldn’t require a thoroughly studied and accepted precedent in order to prepare for a potential black swan event. Be smart and skeptical, absolutely, but ignoring the truth just because it’s weird will put you far behind the innovators and rule breakers who are in currently in power.

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I want to end this on a good note. Despite all the potential psyops and surveillance methods we live under, we are still in a position to know and corroborate findings better than ever before. We have incredible independent civilian databases like UFO-Search.com, (imagine JMail but for UFO cases across centuries) and multiple UAP detection groups that aren’t affiliated with the Department of War. UAP whistleblowers are still braving the risks to testify before Congress, and Congress still has interest in letting them speak (for now). And most importantly, a true disclosure message must be verified internationally for it to be acceptable. If that isn’t allowed to happen, then Executive Disclosure is invalid, and no consequential action post-disclosure should be allowed to happen.

The existence and disclosure of NHI doesn’t belong to one country. It belongs to the entire world.

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If you made it all the way down here…

Thank you so much for reading! UAP Status is a labor of love and an optimistic view of the topic- something that many channels currently lack. Subscribing helps me parse the secrecy and bring a clear view of UAP to new readers.

Paid subscriptions at $5 per month unlock podcast-quality recordings of all posts. Posts are read aloud by me- not a default AI reader. Thanks again!

-Paul

This article looks at a hypothetical situation:

If Trump discloses the existence of non-human intelligence, should we trust him?

Why or why not?

There are strong cases for and against a future Executive Disclosure, some of which I’ll get into below. The whole premise depends on what is being disclosed- aliens in space, under the oceans, an imminent asteroid or contact event, etc, we don’t know.

But if disclosure is an announcement of alien life, then the actual alien life should be far more important than the motive of the person announcing it, right?

Not if the president is lying.

If you’re reading my Substack, you likely have an idea of what Disclosure is. If you don’t, here is the definition from UFO historian Richard Dolan as summarized from Google.

UFO disclosure is not just a single press conference or a news headline; it is the formal acknowledgment by the world’s governments of a non-human intelligence (NHI) presence on Earth. Dolan views this event as a civilizational “reset” that divides human history into two distinct eras: B.C. (Before Confirmation) and A.D. (After Disclosure).

• UFOs (or UAPs) are physical, intelligently controlled craft.

• These craft are not made by any known human civilization.

• The government has known this for decades and has actively suppressed the information.

For the purposes of this article, we are talking about something I would call Executive Disclosure. Executive Disclosure is an official announcement from the President that non-human intelligence is real, and is an actionable concern of the United States government. While Disclosure in general is simply a global acknowledgement of NHI, Executive Disclosure comes from a few people, and is a message crafted to serve a purpose. That purpose depends on the motives of the President and the people around him.

But first let’s set the stage. What is leading us to believe that Trump might make a disclosure announcement? Why consider this now?

Executive Disclosure Can Happen

1. A recent serious comment from member of The Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson (who is not at all involved in the topic of UFOs) said that Trump has prepared a major press conference about UFOs (starts at 14:42).

2. A recent L’Esspresso article that cites a confidential source saying that the White House is moving UAP-related Special Access Programs from Pentagon control to control under the Oval Office. The article is expanded upon in a fantastic Liberation Times article.

3. Trump is failing in his health and job approval, and he is also named thousands of times in the Epstein files. He has an extremely limited number of options to preserve his legacy.

4. The billionaire class is leaving Earth behind. Private space commercialization, Elon Musk’s moon city, and the race towards artificial general intelligence are all moving capital away from the physical constraints of Earth and towards larger things.

If we’re only looking at the sources above, then Executive Disclosure is still a rumor. But past presidents have openly touched the topic and recognized the significance of a disclosure message. Government whistleblowers and scientists cite that executive action is necessary for disclosure, and is the only way to release them from their NDAs.

For whistleblower David Grusch, who has faced retaliation for his testimony about US government UAP programs, disclosure of any kind would validate his claims and remove the target from his back. Here he is making a calculated appeal to Trump’s narcissism to disclose.

David Grusch:

Certainly, members of this current administration are very well aware of this reality. The current president is very knowledgeable on this subject and I trust his leadership on it. I think he has assembled an “A-team” cabinet, and I really believe if Trump wants to be the greatest president and most consequential leader likely in modern history, he certainly has the knowledge, the capabilities, and the understanding of some of these sensitive government transparency issues.

…

Bret:

You think one, he knows and, two, he is open to transparency on UAPs?

He certainly is very well informed on this issue. I will leave it at that. I don’t want to get into what the president might reveal personally.

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So what should we be wary of if Executive Disclosure happens? What questions can we ask to hold power to account, and how can we shape our response to be the most constructive?

Critical Questions for the Executive

1. Who is behind the message? We know a president wouldn’t act alone. This is especially true for Trump, who is almost certainly more of a useful brand name than a leader with coherent ideology. Being a disclosure president might suit his narcissism, but the actual content of the message would have to come from his staff and other outside parties. Who would they be? Who tells the president that NHI are here, and the secret can no longer be kept?

For a national security concern, the message would likely come from National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, or the presidential daily brief, managed by the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

If we suspect that the Executive Disclosure is not genuine, we might look to the president’s more private connections. Make no mistake, this is conspiracy territory. It would include everyone from Thiel, Musk, Netanyahu, Kushner, and even legacy Epstein connections. These kinds of connections may long predate Trump’s current term as president. These critical investigations would have to be aimed towards anyone who has Trump’s ear.

2. What is being disclosed? What new discovery is being made? Will the executive messaging focus on a particular case, a sighting, or a secret meeting with NHI known only to a few insiders? Or will there be a wave, a trove of evidence that forecasts an imminent event? These two examples, the single case or a wave of circumstantial evidence- both have recent precedents. I’ll be using interstellar object 3iAtlas and the New Jersey unidentified drone sightings as real-world examples to illustrate how the beginning of disclosure might look.

The “Spyglass Case”- 3iAtlas. It’s possible that the only people who can verify the facts of a disclosure announcement are the ones making it. Say, for example that 3iAtlas was material proof of NHI. Say it was covered with non-human propulsion technology that moved it along its path through our solar system at its record setting velocity. It’s possible that NASA had control of the only imaging sensors to see it at a fine enough resolution to make that determination. If there’s a ship on the horizon, and only the captain holds the spyglass, his crew must take him at his word if the distant ship is friendly or not.

The “Invasion Wave”- New Jersey Drones. The other example is more visible and emotionally powerful. Unknown objects are hovering over people’s homes. Locals don’t know what they are, and no law enforcement agency or military branch is positively identifying them. Are they hostile? Is this an invasion? Is this a war against an unknown threat? These are the unidentified “drone” cases that happened over New Jersey in 2024 and parts of the UK and Europe in 2025. This kind of news coverage is likely the closest thing to what the inciting incident of disclosure would look like- and it’s why I featured it on my YouTube channel. Below are some clips from state representatives sharing their concerns about mystery drones in this House Homeland Security congressional hearing in 2024. Note the alarm of the Representatives’ concerns about drones, and the astoundingly weak responses from federal authorities.

4. How does American Executive Disclosure affect the rest of the world? This may be the easiest “second opinion” check. If a US president discloses and every US-allied nation doesn’t have a similar message or acknowledging response, then there is a huge red flag. NHI is a global discovery. A false disclosure would not stand up to international scrutiny, unless the evidence was perfectly contained by US interests.

5. How limited is the disclosure? An executive disclosure would never describe a full picture of the phenomenon. Out of the full body of information that a president has access to, what percentage would be discussed? And how would that small amount be used for public messaging?

When diet soda companies want you to buy their product, they highlight some health facts and don’t include others. When the US extracted Wernher von Braun, Hubertus Strughold and Kurt Debus from Germany as part of Operation Paperclip to build rockets for the US, they didn’t immediately publicize that all three were Nazis who used enslaved labor in their work. Pieces of the story will be left out for a reason. It’s important to identify what holes exist in the message, and how important they are.

6.Why is it important for the public to know? Or rather, why does the President need the public to hear the message? Does a president need public approval? We can recall President Bush’s public speeches that precipitated the invasion of Iraq after 9/11. We also know that Bush’s approval rating shot up to 90% immediately after the attacks. Was public approval necessary then?

Consider the recent extraction operation of Nicolas Maduro. This was a highly classified operation that left Congress out of the loop. The Trump administration didn’t require approval for that, nor for the airstrikes on drug boats in the Caribbean, nor did Bush require Congress to enact the war on terror. For a President to disclose NHI, there would have to be a strong reason to do it publicly. Today, Executive Disclosure would both distract the public from the Epstein Files and supercharge aerospace defense spending.

7. What executive actions happen after disclosure? This is where the rubber meets the road. We can talk about UFOs all day, but it means nothing if there is no money spent, no studies funded, no agencies created, no multi-year plans proposed, and no public perception managed. Disclosure will have economic effects, and it is the richest people who have the most to lose. Say everything you want about UAP being bipartisan. Executive Disclosure is a highly political move. There will be winners and losers, and those decisions will be made by people who have major stakes in the game.

Executive Disclosure / Authoritarian Disclosure

At this point, it’s worth asking if there exists a kind of Executive Disclosure that isn’t authoritarian. What would that entail? Can’t we just replay Reagan’s speech about how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat? Can we expect any shred of that sentiment to be held in the Oval Office today?

Consider the 2025 documentary The Age of Disclosure. Dozens of high ranking government officials are claiming aliens exist. They claim UFOs are a potential national security threat, and that the Navy and Air Force witnesses we see in congressional hearings are telling the truth. Yet the only material evidence they present are film photographs and scraps of metal. “Trust us”, they say.

“We are the good guys in government, and we’re telling you the truth”.

“But there are also bad guys here who are covering up irrefutable evidence”

“The American people have a right to know”.

Does this message sound familiar?

Are these people, many of whom work in the federal government today, laying the foundation for Executive Disclosure?

The questions above are less about fact finding, and more about accountability and judgment. Like questions from an attorney to a witness on the stand, we must consider the witness’s credibility and character when we don’t have all the facts. Maybe that’s the real lesson. Executive Disclosure isn’t about truth, it’s about power and messaging and trust. When we don’t have the facts, we make decisions on trust.

Who do we trust to tell us what exists, and what doesn’t?

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Below is a continuation of Richard Dolan’s definition of Disclosure, and includes other forms of it, some nicer than others.

• Fascist Disclosure: A top-down, “controlled” reveal managed by elites to justify a global security state or to maintain power under the guise of protecting humanity from a new threat.

• Premature Disclosure: An accidental or forced reveal (e.g., a massive sighting that cannot be ignored or a data leak) that happens before the “secret-keepers” are ready to manage the narrative.

• Insider Disclosure: A faction within the intelligence community or the “Breakaway Civilization” decides that the secret is no longer sustainable or ethical and begins a coordinated leak (often what people suspect is happening now with whistleblowers).

• People-Driven Disclosure: A bottom-up movement where independent researchers, scientists, and citizens gather enough evidence to make the official denial laughable, essentially “evicting” the secret from the government.

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Thank you so much for reading! UAP Status is a labor of love and an optimistic view of the topic- something that many channels currently lack. Subscribing helps me parse the secrecy and bring a clear view of UAP to new readers.

Paid subscriptions at $5 per month unlock podcast-quality recordings of all posts. Posts are read aloud by me- not a default AI reader. Thanks again!

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Clinton was mentioned in another rare interview from David Grusch, a widely credible whistleblower who testified to Congress in 2023 about his knowledge of secret programs, crash retrievals, “biologics”, and reprisals against himself and other whistleblowers.

Transcript from the interview below.

KELLY: And the reason that they keep it secret from everyone—including, as they point out in the piece, our own presidents over time—is what?

GRUSCH: Well, it depends on the time epoch and which administration. Certainly, there were former Secretaries of Defense and presidents that were briefed on this matter, but it depended on the level of trust that the ‘deep state’ lifers in the government had with those individuals. Unfortunately, this subject has been a victim of domestic information operations, something I discussed publicly in 2023. There has certainly been this ‘Game of Thrones’ activity with multiple factions of the deep state in a bipartisan manner; the Republicans and the Democrats are both guilty. Even in a previous administration, the Obama administration, there were certainly actions taken strategically to help a particular presidential candidate, possibly if this subject were to become normalized and they got elected president. So, there’s been a lot of gamesmanship and ‘House of Cards’ type activities in the past. But it is true that a lot of people have been withheld. I found it deeply disgusting and shocking that even I was not fully accessed into these activities, and I did have a congressionally mandated need to know.

So what does this mean? Grusch is vague when he says that “there were certainly actions taken strategically to help a particular presidential candidate, possibly if this subject were to become normalized and they got elected president”. Is this referencing something totally new, or is there a precedent for Hillary Clinton’s connection with the UAP topic?

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Carefully Approaching the Clinton UAP Rabbit Hole

Hillary Clinton’s UAP interest comes from her history with John Podesta and Laurance Rockefeller. Before Podesta ran Hillary’s election campaign, he was Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff and political advisor to President Barack Obama. John Podesta was very involved in the subject.

Quote from the 2016 Vanity Fair Article Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman Can’t Stop Talking About Aliens

Over the past few decades, Podesta has emerged as one of the most prominent public figures goading the Pentagon to disclose information on UFOs — or, in official channel parlance, “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP). In his view the report’s expected release marks a sea change in not only public sentiment, but political posturing around the issue. “There’s always been tremendous public interest in this, but it was kind of pushed to the fringe. People were viewed as a little bit goofy if they wanted to raise the topic,” he explained. “Now I think that’s changed.”

At the end of his time in Barack Obama’s administration, Podesta somewhat famously tweeted that his “biggest failure” in 2014 was not securing the release of the government’s UFO files. Similarly, during the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton’s declaration that Podesta “has made me personally pledge we are going to get the information out” about UFOs and Area 51 made headlines — not to mention fodder for the late-night circuit. But the political operative’s dalliances with the unexplained, and his desire to determine what truth, exactly, is out there, have roots in his time working for Senator Patrick Leahy, a vocal proponent of declassification and the Freedom of Information Act. When he moved to the White House, Podesta was knee-deep in similar declassification efforts. He also was a member of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy.

For more about the Clinton, Podesta, and Rockefeller UFO disclosure connection, I’d recommend a fantastic UAP researcher Escape Velocity who writes at Medium.com.

The Rockefeller Initiative the Kicked Off the Modern UFO Disclosure Initiative.

Hillary Clinton holding her copy of Are We Alone? with Laurance Rockefeller.

Podesta wrote the foreword in the book that started my serious study on the topic. That book was UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record, by Leslie Keane, published in 2010.

Keane was one of the authors of the famous 2017 New York Times article Glowing Auras and Black Money- the article that legitimized the concept of US government UFO programs by revealing the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

You can learn more about AATIP and the vastly more detailed program AAWSAP in my post about US government UAP programs below.

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Podesta Receives Info on “Fastwalkers”

My first exposure down this particular rabbit hole was from one of today’s best UAP researchers UAP Gerb. Gerb has a channel that is a fantastic resource for US gov aerospace program intersections with UAP. In one live video on YouTube, Gerb and his guests were talking about presidential involvement with UAP, and Gerb recalled his look into Hillary Clinton.

Quote from UAP Gerb’s video.

So, yeah, I do think Hillary was trying to prop herself up as the disclosure president for her 2016 campaign in conjunction with-- Yes, that was evident from the Wikileaks emails. Podesta, Lou, AAWSAP. I think there was a coordinated effort there. Yeah. Well, we have receipts for that. Like that’s not a conspiracy. Like that’s based on like actual... Go to the Wikileaks and look at John Podesta’s emails with Bob Fish about the Defense Support Program and Fastwalker specifically.

The Fastwalker, DSP, and NORAD connection is a pretty long rabbit hole, but thankfully it’s already been charted. Below is a Reddit thread with a host of sources tha lines everything out.

The thread shows multiple emails sent to John Podesta in 2016 about UFO data kept in classified programs. These were leaked in the Podesta emails found on Wikileaks. These emails detailed Podesta’s correspondance with a military aerospace insider named Bob Fish.

Reddit Thread: Bob Fish’s Emails to John Podesta

But who is Bob Fish? And why was he talking to Podesta about “fastwalkers” and UFOs? What are “fastwalkers”, and why are they important here?

Reddit Thread: Bob Fish

Fastwalkers- according to John Greenewald’s source from the US Air Force- is a term created by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to classify Unidentified Flying Objects which enter or leave the atmosphere at a great velocity and which are sometimes captured on the Defense Support Program satellite system.

And how are fastwalkers detected?

Defense Support Program (DSP)- A 1970s program consisting of satellites that detect missile launches, space launches, nuclear detonations, and other defense related actions.

These are prime examples of how UAP / UFOs cross into military aerospace operations. There’s a long and deep dive here that leads to some extraordinary insight from Fish himself that goes far beyond the national security aspects of UAP.

Link to Bob Fish’s email as read by Andy of That UFO Podcast. (The important part starts at 56:38).

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The Political Elephant in the Room

If you were listening the news in 2016, you might have heard Podesta’s name was thrown around during the Pizzagate scandal. If you’re like me, you might have a difficult time detaching him from that awful story. It was the first time I heard his name, and for years his name was firmly stuck the idea of conspiracy. The same can be said about the Clintons and their long history political baggage. Regardless of value or truth, these are the kinds of repeated associations that are used to elevate, smear, or misrepresent people for a purpose. Repeating them is an incredibly effective tool for perception management. This is a fact of today’s media landscape. It’s always a good idea to acknowledge how it may bias your opinion of anyone significant.

With UAP Status, I quote a lot of politicians. I take great care to separate their character and their values from their claims. While human values often determine human behavior, there is no causal relationship between how someone behaves, and the accuracy of their claims. Truthful statements often come from unstrustworthy sources, and false or misleading statements can come from the sources you trust. When following the evidence of UAP, we are separating the messenger from the message.

Thankfully, the UAP subject still has a lot of bipartisan support in Congress. This has likely helped the topic survive since the first hearing in 2022. I have no doubt that polarizing UAP along party lines will exclude Congress from oversight, and the topic will disappear from public view.

With that being said, I’ll close with something funny I found through this Wikileaks rabbit hole. The following is an email chain between two campaign representatives discussing how Hillary Clinton will talk about UFOs on a 2015 episode of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show.

> On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Betsaida Alcantara <

> balcantara@hillaryclinton.com> wrote: >

>> Sara,

>> Jimmy Kimmel is planning to ask HRC about UFOs and area 51. Jimmy

>> Kimmel’s producer noted that Podesta is particularly interested in the

>> topic. The producer cited the Mother Jones story below titled “ETs for

>> Hillary: Why UFO activists are excited about Clinton presidency”, in it

>> they quote Podesta’s comments on the topic. I’m also including comments

>> Bill Clinton made on the topic. Schake thinks Podesta could help us develop

>> a fun answer to this. The memo is due at 6:30pm tonight. Let me know if you

>> can help.

>>

>> Potential Q:

>> *Two of your closest advisers Bill Clinton and John Podesta have spoken

>> out about their strong interest in UFOs and area 51. Mother Jones had an

>> article this spring titled, “ETs for Hillary: Why UFO activists are excited

>> about Clinton presidency”. Is there a reason they should be excited? Are

>> you ready to make a campaign promise to this critical constituency tonight?*

On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Sara Latham <slatham@hillaryclinton.com> wrote:

> ha yes, I am v familiar with JDP's area51 and X Files obsession..... >

> the question seems odd ? is there any further context on why Jimmy is

> going down the alien road ??

>

> which skit did we agree, in the end ?

>

>

Sara Latham <slatham@hillaryclinton.com> Date: Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 2:59 PM Subject: Re: UFOs and Jimmy Kimmel To: Betsaida Alcantara <balcantara@hillaryclinton.com>, Kristina Schake < kschake@hillaryclinton.com>, Milia Fisher <mfisher@hillaryclinton.com

> he thinks it would be awesome and funny, if she explained that you don’t use the term UFO anymore... ‘Jimmy if you talk about UFOs, people think you’re nuts - you have to use the term, UAP - unexplained aerial phenomenon.

this is an issue I think the govt should take this more seriously the govt has been too stingy on what information we should know and when I’m President, the american people will find out !!

John’s line is - the american people can handle the truth

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Thank you so much for reading! UAP Status is a labor of love and an optimistic view of the topic- something that many channels currently lack. Subscribing helps me parse the secrecy and bring a clear view of UAP to new readers.

Paid subscriptions at $5 per month unlock podcast-quality recordings of all posts. Posts are read aloud by me- not a default AI reader. Thanks again!

-Paul

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Curious people entering the topic don’t often don’t know what to look for, and government programs are not exactly advertised for attention. If you don’t know the names of the programs, you’re not going to find much useful information.

Part 2 will briefly cover the UAP Disclosure Act of 2024- a bipartisan attempt to disclose UAP secrets to the public via writing it into the national defense budget.

This post will also describe KONA BLUE, the code name for the Department of Homeland Security’s UAP program- a successor to the 2008 Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program.

Before we look at the UAP Disclosure Act, we need a little background on the NDAA.

What is the National Defense Authorization Act?

The NDAA provides authorization of appropriations for the Department of Defense, nuclear weapons programs of the Department of Energy, and other defense-related activities. It’s business as usual for the most powerful military industrial complex in the world, and it gets proposed, amended, voted on, and passed each fiscal year.

But in 2023, Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds brought an amendment to the NDAA. This amendment was the UAP Disclosure Act.

What is the UAP Disclosure Act?

The UAPDA was the proposed legislation to centralize and archive all materials and information related to UAP that the US controls, and with certain exceptions, disclose everything to the public.

So why now? Where was this interest coming from? Who in government wanted to suddenly bring America’s UAP programs out of the shadows? The why is harder to answer, but we know who the members of Congress are who pushed this act forward.

Below are all quotes from the press release for the UAP Disclosure Act.

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Why Disclose Now?

This is probably the most interesting question. Congress doesn’t often pass legislation regarding UAP. Something had changed. The amendment’s language gives us a peek at the rationale.

Find the full UAPDA language here.

The Purpose of the amendment is in Section 2, shown below.

       (1) All Federal Government records related to unidentified 
     anomalous phenomena should be preserved and centralized for 
     historical and Federal Government purposes.

       (2) All Federal Government records concerning unidentified 
     anomalous phenomena should carry a presumption of immediate 
     disclosure and all records should be eventually disclosed to 
     enable the public to become fully informed about the history 
     of the Federal Government’s knowledge and involvement 
     surrounding unidentified anomalous phenomena.

     (3) Legislation is necessary to create an enforceable, 
     independent, and accountable process for the public 
     disclosure of such records.

       (4) Legislation is necessary because credible evidence and 
     testimony indicates that Federal Government unidentified 
     anomalous phenomena records exist that have not been 
     declassified or subject to mandatory declassification review 
     as set forth in Executive Order 13526 (50 U.S.C. 3161 note; 
     relating to classified national security information) due in 
     part to exemptions under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 
     U.S.C. 2011 et seq.), as well as an over-broad interpretation 
     of ``transclassified foreign nuclear information’‘, which is 
     also exempt from mandatory declassification, thereby 
     preventing public disclosure under existing provisions of 
     law.

       (5) Legislation is necessary because section 552 of title 
     5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the ``Freedom 
     of Information Act’‘), as implemented by the Executive branch 
     of the Federal Government, has proven inadequate in achieving 
     the timely public disclosure of Government unidentified 
     anomalous phenomena records that are subject to mandatory 
     declassification review.

       (6) Legislation is necessary to restore proper oversight 
     over unidentified anomalous phenomena records by elected 
     officials in both the executive and legislative branches of 
     the Federal Government that has otherwise been lacking as of 
     the enactment of this Act.

       (7) Legislation is necessary to afford complete and timely 
     access to all knowledge gained by the Federal Government 
     concerning unidentified anomalous phenomena in furtherance of 
     comprehensive open scientific and technological research and 
     development essential to avoiding or mitigating potential 
     technological surprise in furtherance of urgent national 
     security concerns and the public interest.

In a nutshell, the purpose of the UAP Disclosure Act is to…

1. Centralize UAP records at the National Archives.

2. Disclose the truth about UAP to the public.

3. Create an enforceable process for disclosure.

4. Declassify old UAP records that are overdue for declassification.

5. Remedy the fact that FOIA has not been effective in achieving disclosure of UAP.

6. Restore proper oversight of UAP material and records to the executive and legislative branches.

7. Prevent technological surprise for purpose of national security.

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The language was unprecedented. The amendment had definitions for Non-Human Intelligence, Technologies of Unknown Origin, and included the observed characteristics of UAP like:

       (i) Instantaneous acceleration absent apparent inertia.
       (ii) Hypersonic velocity absent a thermal signature and 
     sonic shockwave.
       (iii) Transmedium (such as space-to-ground and air-to-
     undersea) travel.
       (iv) Positive lift contrary to known aerodynamic 
     principles.
       (v) Multispectral signature control.
       (vi) Physical or invasive biological effects to close 
     observers and the environment.

Did the UAPDA Become Law?

Unfortunately, no, most of it didn’t. The only part that made it into law was the creation of the National Archives UAP Records Collection. The UAPDA itself was just an amendment. That means we don’t have a record of who rejected the amendment’s language, and on what grounds.

Despite the failure, many members of Congress have kept interest, and continued to push for transparency.

KONA BLUE- the Cancelled DHS Program

KONA BLUE was the code name of the proposed continuation of AAWSAP. Below are the first two pages of the declassified pdf of KONA BLUE, a prospective special access program that, if created, would have been part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology division. The full 56-page pdf is available through AARO’s website.

From AARO’s webpage on the History and Origin of KONA BLUE:

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) first learned of the KONA BLUE program from interviews conducted as part of its historical review. Multiple interviewees identified KONA BLUE as a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sensitive compartment established to protect the retrieval and exploitation of “non-human biologics.” AARO researched the information provided by the interviewees and learned KONA BLUE was a Prospective Special Access Program (PSAP) that had been proposed to DHS leadership but was never approved or formally established. KONA BLUE never received any materials or funding, and there is no information beyond the proposal presentation marked with the KONA BLUE name.

“Biologics”- there’s that word again.

KONA BLUE’s Areas of Study

Just like the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program (AAWSAP) mentioned in Part 1, KONA BLUE had many divisions of study.

The most immediately interesting divisions are the plans for the Advanced Technology Center, and the Consciousness Center.

The mission of the Advanced Technology Center is to establish a comprehensive program. First to gain access to and inventory all existing caches of Advanced Aerospace Vehicle (AAV) materials and documentation within CONUS, whether residing in archive storage or under active program investigation in National Laboratories, government organizations and/or contractors;

The Consciousness Center manages the acquisition, training, and utilization of remote viewers and communicators. These unorthodox techniques may prove to be critical collection methods for supplementing efforts within Data Collection, Advanced Technology, and, especially, the Experimental and Medical Centers.

This is not the first time the US has funded and operated remote viewing programs. If you are interested in US history of remote viewing programs, I would highly recommend this post about Albert Stubblebine- the man behind the remote viewing programs of the Army Intelligence and Security Command and Defense Intelligence Agency. Garrett’s work is phenomenal, and his work dives deep into US history and brings back incredible insights about UAP and more.

GΔRRΞTT

Major General Albert Stubblebine III

In my previous article, ‘Metallic Voices and Space Kids,’ we explored the origins of the US government’s interest in paranormal and psychic phenomena. These subjects present a long and winding path, and only patches of de-classified material are available to examine, often leaving the best sleuths chasing their tails …

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a year ago · 15 likes · 6 comments · GΔRRΞTT

The Questions Pile Up

So what can we take from all of this? Is the KONA BLUE pdf real? Were these actual plans for more UAP studies? AARO is certainly presenting the proposal for KONA BLUE as if it was real.

Lets recount the official programs we’ve seen so far. We’ve seen records establishing and describing AAWSAP, AATIP, the UAPTF, AOIMSG, AARO, and the attempts and failures of the UAPDA and KONA BLUE. It’s a mouthful.

My goal with this post is not to dive into any particular program. Instead, I simply want to make the case that there is a long history of known UAP programs that cost taxpayer dollars and require political will at the house, senate, and cabinet levels. In the context of official programs, the UAP issue has always been based around national defense. While UFOs may show up for seemingly no reason, legislation and defense budgets do not.

I have heard compelling arguments that many of these programs are layers of disinformation to cover up secret stealth aircraft. That may be true in some cases, but the deeper you look, the stranger the picture gets. In the past 4 years we have stories from Skinwalker Ranch of orbs, wolf-men, portals, and whistleblower testimony of biologics, detailed descriptions of massive triangles and other impossible objects hovering inside restricted airspace with no effective action taken against them.

These are only the most recent and most public cases, and nearly all of them are from government employees speaking out at their own risk, under oath, in public broadcast media before congress. If this is just the tip of the iceberg, what stories are being squashed and classified before they reach the status of acceptance on the news?

There is a precedent for some extraordinarily weird things going on at the official level. My posts don’t go into too much detail about the truly weird stuff. Instead, my goal is to list the facts and credibility of the topic at large, in plain language, and to give a historical baseline of record. I think many people are immediately turned away when they see UAP framed as spooky tales and entertainment. The stigma has gotten to them, and they are quick to judge. UAP Status is for those people in particular.

Those of us on the ground may not strictly believe aliens are real, or that some UAP warp spacetime as propulsion. Without reading any books on the phenomenon, that’s a reasonable reaction. But to me, the most fascinating thing is that certain people in government take these phenomena seriously. It’s their job. And your taxpayer dollars pay their salaries.

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Thank you so much for reading! UAP Status is a labor of love and an optimistic view that some of these great questions can be answered. Subscribing helps me continue my research to parse the secrecy of the phenomenon.

Paid subscriptions at $5 per month unlock podcast-quality recordings of all posts. Posts are read aloud by me- not a default AI reader. Thanks again.

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After nine months, NASA’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Report has concluded. Their objective was to examine the current state of UAP data collection, and to provide a roadmap for contributing to AARO’s mission of resolving UAP.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and three other NASA leads are seated at the panel and taking questions from the public. Film director James Fox is first in line and asks two questions. His question is a response to NASA and AARO’s assertion that there is no evidence that UAP are extraterrestrial in origin.

Thank you very much, this is directed to Mr Nelson. Thank you for being here. Two quick questions. One is, how can we make the determination of what something isn’t when we don’t know what it is?

And B, after a careful review of the data if it’s determined that some, underline the word “some” 10 times, UFOs or UAP originate from non-human intelligence, what’s the plan to disclose that to the public?

Administrator Nelson:
Let me repeat what I said. I think it’s important that you hear this word for word. The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but we don’t know what these UAP are. The mission of NASA is to find out the unknown. I’ve said several times in my comments here today that we, NASA, deal openly, and we will be transparent on this, and we’re trying to address the question of—there’s so much concern that there’s something locked up, classified, and that the American government is not being open. Well, we are the American government, and we are open, and we’re going to be open about this. We don’t—again, I’m going to repeat that statement—but we don’t know what these UAP are, but we’re going to try to find out. Thank you very much.

James Fox:

And is there a plan in place, if it is determined that some of them represent or originate from a non-human intelligence, to tell the public? Is there a plan?

Administrator Nelson:

If we are what I said we intend to be, which is transparent, you bet your boots we will say that. And I’ve tried to set the table for you by telling you what I personally believe, in a universe that is so vast, that could there be a replication of life on Earth elsewhere, in another solar system, that is so big? Of course I believe that. The distances—it would have to be a very advanced civilization—the distances, you know, light years, hundreds of light years, billions of light years. But whatever we find, we’re going to tell you. Thank you very much.

Let’s clarify the question and answer.

Fox is asking if NASA will be forthcoming about UAP if they are intelligent.

Nelson responds by asserting NASA’s mission of finding out the unknown, and being transparent. He then frames the possibility of non-human intelligence as being extraterrestrial, for example, as a civilization billions of light years away.

Fox is no stranger to the topic. He’s directed some of the best documentaries on the subject for almost 20 years. He’s interviewed hundreds of people willing and unwilling to talk about their experiences with UAP all over the world. In his film Moment of Contact, Fox traces the events that happened in 1996 in Varginha Brazil, in which three girls saw a large-eyed hominid creature soon after a UFO crashed near the city, and a police officer died days after grabbing and transporting it to a hospital. He’s familiar with the subject, the stigma, and the measures to maintain secrecy around it.

Fox was asking if NASA would disclose the origin of UAP if they knew it. Nelson asserted that NASA is transparent, and that the conversation is about extraterrestrials.

Extraterrestrial vs Non-Human Intelligence

Below is a quote from the UAP Disclosure Act, an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023. The quote defines non-human intelligence as well as technologies of unknown origin.

Non-human intelligence.--The term ``non-human intelligence’‘ means any sentient intelligent non-human lifeform regardless of nature or ultimate origin that may be presumed responsible for unidentified anomalous phenomena or of which the Federal Government has become aware.

Technologies of unknown origin.--The term ``technologies of unknown origin’‘ means any materials or meta-materials, ejecta, crash debris, mechanisms, machinery, equipment, assemblies or sub-assemblies, engineering models or processes, damaged or intact aerospace vehicles, and damaged or intact ocean-surface and undersea craft associated with unidentified anomalous phenomena or incorporating science and technology that lacks prosaic attribution or known means of human manufacture.

Since we are keeping track:

• The UAPDA of 2023, 2024, and 2025 did not contain the word “extraterrestrial”.

• Each year of the UAPDA asserts interest in lifeforms and technology regardless of origin, and have allocated funds and proposed policy for transparency for UAP study and disclosure.

• NASA’s UAP independent study report does not use the phrase non-human intelligence. It only frames NHI as extraterrestrial.

Let’s look at the most damning part of the NASA UAP Report itself.

Science is a process that reveals reality rather than sculpts it—no matter how unsatisfying or confusing that reality might be. That includes the question of whether UAP have an extraterrestrial origin. There is an intellectual continuum between hypothesizing that faraway extraterrestrial civilizations might produce detectable technologies, and looking for those technologies closer to home. But in the search for life beyond Earth, extraterrestrial life itself must be the hypothesis of last resort—the answer we turn to only after ruling out all other possibilities. As Sherlock Holmes said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

These statements might seem reasonable on the surface, but here’s why they are absolutely not.

1. UAP can potentially redefine what is physically possible. Ruling out what is currently impossible is a surefire way to not learn anything new.

2. “Ruling out all other possibilities” would scientifically require the study to have full knowledge of everything on earth in the totality of earth’s history before it can prove an extraterrestrial hypothesis. Taking this route is worse than stupid, it is a waste of time, money, and a waste of NASA’s great minds.

NASA, by way of their independent study, have shot themselves in the foot by taking this route. Somehow, the UAPDA, an amendment to America’s defense budget, is on a better course towards the truth.

AARO and Near-Earth Stigma

In 2025, Dylan Borland testified about his experience with the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and recounts how they have framed the ET vs NHI issue.

When we have not identified the phenomenon, it would be silly at best, and misleading at worst to only characterize an exotic origin of UAP as extraterrestrial. The term itself carries cultural baggage, and enhances “near-Earth stigma”. Near- Earth stigma is the fascinating concept that scientists are only willing to study non- human intelligent life when it is outside of the solar system.

Astronomer Beatriz Villarroel has encountered this when attempting to have her research presented with SETI. Her talk at the 2024 Sol Symposium gives a fascinating look at near-Earth stigma.

Terrestrial Intelligence

Why, you might ask, is this issue of UAP origin so important? SETI, NASA, AARO, and our best official agencies are only willing to acknowledge intelligent life if it is from outside our solar system. Yet the overwhelming majority of UAP are reported inside Earth’s atmosphere. Many are reported as lights and objects seen under the ocean surface. The origin of UAP may not be strictly ET. Other hypotheses of non human intelligence include ultraterrestrials, which are described here in a paper by AAWSAP contractor Hal Puthoff.

In a nutshell, the ultraterrestrial model includes non-human intelligence recorded in ancient history, occult and paranormal phenomena, and advanced breakaway civilizations that live parallel to the known world and kept hidden through exotic technology.

NASA is an Intelligence Agency

Lets take a second look at James Fox’s question to NASA Administrator Nelson. What can we take away from their interaction? Did Nelson give a satisfying answer? Is there a precedent for an organization like NASA to lie about its discoveries?

If Nelson was holding discoveries from the public, he would assert that NASA is a transparent organization. If NASA was telling the truth, he would say the same thing. This is the situation we face.

Consider today, now that NASA (and several other agencies) have had their primary mission superseded from a presidential executive order.

The agencies and agency subdivisions set forth in section 2 of this order are hereby determined to have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.

Among the agencies are:

The following subdivisions of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

(1) National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service.

(2) National Weather Service.”; and

(c) Adding the following after section 1-419:

“1-420. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

1-421. The United States Agency for Global Media.”.

Link to the Executive Order from August 28, 2025

In contrast, here is NASA’s Vision and Mission from their 2022 Strategic Plan document from their website.

Now that NASA has an executive priority over its core mission of scientific exploration and innovation, does this increase, or decrease the likelihood that an administrator would tell the truth about UAP?

Nelson’s word should not be taken at face value- not because he represents NASA specifically, but because there is no incentive to honestly answer that question. Even if it’s not strictly classified, UAP revelations are explosive and would only invite more questions and scrutiny.

This being said, Fox’s questions are still important. By simply asking, he is checking the accountability of NASA, something that can only be done in a public setting. Holding power to account is something we can and should do, especially for such esteemed bodies like NASA.

I do not think NASA has suddenly turned against the public interest. I also do not think anyone should paint a massive and diverse organization like NASA with the broad brush of hate. NASA’s work is inspiring to millions of people and it’s a symbol of national pride. The space race of the 60s united the country in a powerful way, and today it has the power to put honest science and money towards studying exotic UAP, no matter what their origin might be. We can only hope that NASA and the current powers of the US can reject any further move towards politicized, non-scientific purposes.

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Table of Contents

(2008-2010) AAWSAP - comprehensive UFO study including paranormal activity.

(2008- undetermined) AATIP - section of AAWSAP used for public disclosure.

(2020-2021) UAP Task Force - DoD response to mounting interest in UAP.

(2021-2022) AOIMSG - DoD synchronization effort for inter-agency cooperation.

(2022- present) AARO - current centralized agency tasked with resolving UAP cases.

AAWSAP- Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications Program

AAWSAP was the first official study of UAP since the termination of the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book in 1969. The program was proposed by Senators Harry Reid, Daniel Inouye, and Ted Stevens in 2008, and operated under DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency).

DIA contracted BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies) to execute the AAWSAP contract.

Between 2008-2010, AAWSAP received $22 million from DIA for the two years it was active. More than 75 contractor personnel performed exotic aerospace research, and several hundred part-time personnel conducted fieldwork.

AAWSAP’s Mission

AAWSAP’s mission was to study the flight characteristics and evaluate the threat potential of UAP. To do this, scientists and contractors executed six projects.

1. Project Physics- research on future aerospace capabilities of propulsion, power generation, signature reduction, and armament to name a few.

2. Project Engagement- locate and access geographic areas of UAP sightings.

3. Project Northern Tier- obtain case files of UAP sightings near restricted airspace of ICBM sites.

4. Project Colares- obtained videos and case files from the 1977 case of Colares Island, Brazil, in which a variety of UAP injured and killed islanders.

5. Project Ranch- researchers reported metallic UAP, flying orbs, otherworldly creatures, poltergeists, and more at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah.

6. Project Consciousness- examined the connection between UAP experiences and the human mind and body, including telepathy, remote viewing, psychic functioning, etc.

7. Project Database- The project at the center of the other six. The database was a multi million dollar operation to collect, analyze and fuse data from the other projects.

AAWSAP stands out from other programs because it explicitly studied paranormal phenomena.

“BAASS was an organization specifically created to execute the AAWSAP contract to evaluate the threat potential of UAP. From the beginning, AAWSAP was determined to cast as wide a net as possible to study all phenomena within the overall rubric of the UAP topic. That meant that if paranormal phenomena were known to collocate with, and overlap temporally with, UAP, then paranormal phenomena would also be studied by AAWSAP.”

From Inside the U.S. Government Covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations, written by AAWSAP program managers James Lacatski and Colm Kellher, and journalist George Knapp.

Link to the AAWSAP Contract and Related Documents

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AATIP- Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program

AATIP was a secret until its existence was revealed by the 2017 New York Times article Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The U.S. Government’s UFO Program. Despite AATIP taking the spotlight, it wasn’t a fully funded scientific program like AAWSAP. According to Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, the 2021 book written by the program managers of AAWSAP…

The AATIP moniker rose from an unclassified nickname that was inserted into a letter that was sent from Senator Harry Reid to the Deputy Secretary of Defense requesting the creation of the Special Access Program. After AAWSAP had shut down, the AATIP designation was used to describe a completely separate, small initiative that was underway at the Pentagon to study UAPs encountered by military personnel.

We know a few things about AATIP, but it’s full scope is messy and inconsistent. This 2024 entry from John Greenewald at The Black Vault describes the contested origin of AATIP.

AATIP’s Mission

Quote from the link above:

AATIP was a program with a strategic focus on “beyond next generation technologies in the areas of lift, propulsion, cloaking, and human effects,” and sought “unexplained or unknown aerial systems” information from all DoD elements “for the purposes of intelligence analysis and exploitation.”

Between 2010 and 2019, there were no publicly known government agencies that were investigating UAP. The 2017 article, along with the three videos and disclosure of AATIP, kick started public and government interest in UFOs. In 2020, the UAP Task Force was created.

UAP Task Force

On Aug. 4, 2020, Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force (UAPTF).

UAP Task Force’s Mission

The Department of Defense established the UAPTF to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.

Less than a year later in 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

One of the points in the assessment’s executive summary was the following…

UAP pose a hazard to safety of flight and could pose a broader danger if some instances represent sophisticated collection against U.S. military activities by a foreign government or demonstrate a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary.

In 2021 the conversation shifted. Suddenly, UAP might be advanced technology controlled by an adversary, likely Russia or China.

In the same year of 2021, the Deputy Secretary of Defense sent a memo establishing the successor to the UAPTF.

AOIMSG- Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group

AOIMSG’s Mission

From the Deputy Secretary of Defense’s memo:

AOIMSG’s mission is to detect, identify, and attribute objects of interests in SUA, and to assess and as appropriate, mitigate any associated threats to safety of flight and national security.

SUA refers to Special Use Airspace, and includes space that is prohibited or restricted for safety and military operations.

In May 2022, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation, holds the first congressional hearing about UAP and UFOs in 50 years.

VIDEO: Committee Chair Andre Carson introduces the Hearing- 35 seconds

AARO- All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office

Less than three months after the hearing, AARO replaces AOIMSG. AARO was established by Ronald Moultrie, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, who was one of the witnesses at the hearing.

While AOIMSG was limited to airborne phenomena, AARO expanded data collection of submerged objects and “trans medium” objects that travel between domains of underwater, air, and space.

AARO’s Mission

From their current website, AAROs’ mission is to…

Minimize technical and intelligence surprise by synchronizing identification, attribution, and mitigation of UAP in the vicinity of national security areas.

Today AARO holds the central responsibility for resolving UAP cases, from military, civilians, and anyone willing to file a report.

IMAGE: UAP that AARO resolved as a balloon

IMAGE: From AARO’s Resources page with links for spherical drones, Starlink satellites, and other objects potentially mistaken as exotic UAP.

AARO has been controversial regarding its misrepresentation of the history of UAP, and is not trusted by all members of congress and even some witnesses from the four congressional hearings on UAP. It’s a critical point to understand, and I’ll be covering this in a later post. Below are some examples of AARO’s suspicious intentions from the hearings.

From the beginning, the only agencies that have publicly studied UFOs and UAP have been under the Department of Defense and US Intelligence Community. The phenomenon is not only real; UAP investigations are line items in the Pentagon’s near-trillion dollar budget.

Part 2 will focus on:

• NASA’s 2023 UAP Study.

• Kona Blue- the cancelled UAP program from the Department of Homeland Security.

• The NDAA- National Defense Authorization act- the national defense budget which was used to kickstart the current status of UAP as potential natsec threat.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the UAP Disclosure Act- 1 minute

Credibility was key. I wanted to differentiate myself from the clickbait and ancient aliens. I would ONLY share clips from witness sworn testimony from the recent hearings. The idea was to completely remove the sensationalism and “woo” to attract the smart, curious people who are normally turned off of the subject. I got enough positive feedback from the group I was part of, and I started an Instagram account and YouTube channel titled UAP Status. Today the channels are still small, but they contain one of the most easily accessible and coherent collections of Congressional testimony about UAP that include over 50 short videos from four hearings between 2022 and 2025. Below are some of these clips.

Reports of Non-Human Biologics with Recovered Craft- 1 minute

UFO Flight Characteristics from the 2004 Nimitz Carrier sighting- 1 minute

2012 Massive Flying Triangle Sighting Above Langley AFB- 3 minutes

Missing FAA Process for Reporting UAP- 45 seconds

The past few years have seen the topic explode. Mainstream exposure of UAP is no longer consigned to the History channel and The Joe Rogan Experience.

Seeing everything discussed by Congress feels pretty weird, but it’s also kind of refreshing to see it be bipartisan. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was asking about what the FAA can do better to facilitate better UAP reporting. Nancy Mace was asking the reputationally scary (but absolutely necessary) questions about alien bodies. Today, the UAP topic is just as much about government transparency as it is about aliens and flying saucers.

Four Congressional Hearings about UAP

Links to Full Coverage of the Hearings

2022 Hearing

2023 Hearing

2024 Hearing

2025 Hearing

Over the four hearings, patterns emerged. We got a glimpse of what departments are involved with the UAP topic. We saw how unprepared and uninformed the intelligence community was. UFOs are disabling nuclear weapons in their silos? Never heard of it! We saw the stated reasons for secrecy (national security) and desire to release decades of data. Every hearing brought one more witness than the last. There was a real curiosity and concern that congress was being kept out of important decisions regarding advanced programs and exotic tech. This was how the government publicly acknowledged the existence of UAP.

Currently, the organization responsible for UFOs in the US is the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was established in 2022. Unfortunately, AARO has misrepresented the history of the subject, and has not been fully trusted by House Oversight subcommittee members and even witnesses on the panel. For reference, AARO falls under the DoD and specifically the office of the Secretary of Defense, so calibrate your expectations accordingly.

The Debrief: AARO’s Historical Report: A Tale of Factual Errors and Old Mistakes Repeated

The Hill: Pentagon’s flawed UFO report demands congressional action

“The universe is changing” / “Our life is what our thoughts make it”

Ironically, AARO’s reports still remain at Level 1 on the UAP scale, despite most of the Congressional committees witnesses are at Level 3 and beyond.

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Measuring the Level of Discourse

The UAP Scale has 5 levels that indicate the level of depth, conspiracy, and how far someone is willing to seriously engage with the topic, from acknowledging that UFOs are legitimate phenomena worth investigating, to characterizing non-human intelligence in relation to humans. The scale prioritizes convenience over strict accuracy, and I built it to easily categorize and tag clips on my media channels.

Below are details on each level of the UAP Scale.

The scale is inspired by J. Allen Hynek’s categories of close encounters. Close Encounters of the First Kind were UFO sightings hundreds of feet away. The Second Kind displays tangible evidence like marks left on vegetation or adverse health effects on witnesses. The Third Kind involved reports of witnesses seeing the UFO “occupants”, either inside or outside of the craft.

The 1968 UFO Hearings

Before 2022, the last time the House of Representatives had an on-the-record conversation about UFOs was in 1968, with the Committee on Science and Astronautics. Carl Sagan joined five other scientists of different disciplines to give statements on the situation. One of them, UC Berkeley civil engineering professor James A. Harder cited a 1953 report from another scientist, a chemist who witnessed a UFO while wearing polarized glasses and saw dark rings around the craft as it flew, giving a potential clue to its propulsion capabilities. Below is a quote from Harding about the sighting.

Mr. Wells Allen Webb, an applied chemist with a master of science degree from the University of California, was 1 mile north of Spain Flying Field, 7 miles east of Yuma, Ariz., just off U.S. Highway No. 80, when his attention was drawn to the sky to the north by some low-flying jet aircraft. Then he noticed a small white cloud-like object in an otherwise cloudless sky. He watched for about 5 minutes as it traveled eastward; as it reached a spot north-northeast of his location, it abruptly altered shape from being oblong and subtending about half the angle of the full moon—about 15 minutes of arc—to be circular and subtending about 5 minutes of arc. Webb was wearing polaroid glasses and noted that there appeared around the object a series of dark rings, the outermost of which was about six times the diameter of the central white or silvery object, or about the diameter of the full moon. The object or cloud then decreased in apparent diameter, as if it were traveling away from him, and disappeared in another few minutes. During this time Webb repeatedly took off his glasses and then put them back on, noting each time that the rings appeared only when he was wearing the glasses.

Transcript of the Full Hearing

NICAP Report on the 1953 Yuma Arizona Sighting

1968 was another period where UFOs made the news and the government brought on experts to testify. The full transcript contains dozens of other reports of separate incidents and scientific explanations. Among the experts who testified, all of them believed that the phenomenon was real and warranted further study.

Suddenly, UFOs are Mainstream

While the topic has been popular for decades, there is a noticeable crescendo that is still happening today. Mainstream shows that have never seriously covered UFOs are doing so. The Age of Disclosure documentary has been marketed relentlessly (see my review here) as an authoritative source. Spielberg’s next film coming in 2026 is titled Disclosure Day. Below are just a few examples of modern mainstream talk show coverage of UFOs.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver- UFOs- 2024

Overtime with Bill Maher: The Age of Disclosure- 2025

Bill Clinton Teases Area 51 Secrecy, Invisibility, and John Podesta's Interest

Jimmy Kimmel Asks President Obama about Aliens

Presidents have interview questions approved in advance when they appear on shows. Is there a script being followed, or a message being tested? Do we want to have this conversation in this moment of historically low trust in government? Or is that the point?

Before I started following the UFO topic in 2021, my fascination was the business models and incentives of social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as their effects on attention spans, anxiety, and the externalities that resulted from them. Optimization for time-on-device, and incentivized addictive patterns have changed the way we communicate. At scale, social media is strategically used to sow division, promote propaganda, and directly influence voters.

The Center for Humane Technology’s Ledger of Harms- A collection of the invisible cost on young and old minds from years of social media.

Why is a special interest documentary about UFOs being advertised on ABC, CNN, FOX, and Joe Rogan's podcast? Are UAP a threat? Are they classified human tech from Lockheed Martin or not? This is the intersection of government messaging and UAP. Like any other issue, the US government will only show you the parts it wants you to see. No, the skeletons in the closet will not be televised.

There is a widely accepted idea in social media and advertising that if you receive the product for free, then you are somebody else’s product. If that’s true here, then what kind of product are we? Who is the buyer? Why is the public slowly being included into decades long secrets of UFOs? This question is exactly what I will be answering with future posts on UAP Status.

(and if you made it all the way here, thank you for your early support!)

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Why This One is Different

Go on any streaming service and type in UFO. Dozens of saucers, aliens, stargates, and pyramids line up and beg for attention. What if there was a trusted, authoritative source you could find about UFOs and UAP, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena? You’re a discerning viewer with limited time. You’re going to watch the latest, greatest, glossiest, trusted source. It’s got Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio talking about UFOs! It’s bipartisan!

Okay, maybe you don’t know any of that and maybe it’s just getting pushed to the top of your feed.

Thanks, Amazon Prime Video.

The difference here is that The Age of Disclosure is receiving marketing for a mainstream audience. The film premiered at SXSW and its director Dan Farah is interviewed in Hollywood publications like EW, Variety, and appearing on Fox News, CNN, Joe Rogan, and even on Real Time with Bill Maher.

The Age of Disclosure is the culmination of years of UFO revelations from whistleblowers, US Air Force and Navy pilots, and other officials. It wants to grab your attention with credible sources as well as a deep state conspiracy described here as “The Legacy Program”, an ever-changing group that holds secrets about recovered UFOs, alien bodies, and reverse-engineered exotic technology .

Our guide through these rabbit holes is Luis Elizondo, a former DOD intelligence officer who worked on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, an agency that investigates UAP reports around the world through the lens of a national security threat. This is largely the same lens that the film uses, and on the surface it is remarkably compelling. Elizondo is crystal clear in his message.

“Based on hard evidence and data, we learned that UAPs present serious national security concerns and a potential existential threat. Simply put, transmedium crafts, vehicles that have the capability to operate in space, air, and water and seemingly defy all that humanity knows about physics, have been operating with complete impunity around the world since at least the 1940s.”

Clips from drone sensors and other aircraft cameras show small round objects flying around the sky, the ocean, over buildings, etc.

“At AATIP, we had access to some of the most sensitive videos in the Department of Defense inventory. If you could be in my shoes and see what I’ve seen, and folks like Jay Stratton, there would be zero shadow of a doubt that these things are real and not made by humans”.

Elizondo describes the five “Observables” that are signatures of UAP.

There is a serious dissonance coming from the top of government. B-roll of government officials with worried looks walk around the capitol building and other landmarks. “Why isn’t the government taking this seriously?” asks the government. Elizondo and his colleagues are underdogs, and he plays the part well. He shows the cognitive dissonance of “I want to talk about something that I am not legally allowed to”. UAP are clearly something that needs investigating with transparency to the public, yet investigative efforts are stopped and results are classified. This feeling should be familiar to anyone who listens to today’s news about the AI bubble, the Epstein files, and so much more at this point.

But there is another source of dissonance, this time for the viewer. With claims of crash retrievals and alien bodies, this documentary must have some crazy footage right? Where are the scene recreations that make UFO docs watchable to a modern, social media-soaked audience? The Age of Disclosure is dry as a bone here. There are some animated sequences of saucers floating over ICBM silos, but not much more.

In its effort to legitimize the topic, The Age of Disclosure has traded spectacle for pure authority and credibility. This is likely for the audience that has absorbed the stigma built around the topic, and now rejects the clickbait. No big-eyed gray aliens or pyramids here. Only Congressional offices, courtyards, and hallways. Is this how to legitimize aliens? By not showing them? Where have we (not) seen this before?

The National Security Threat Narrative

It’s October 2002, and George W. Bush is outlining the threat from a supposedly WMD- armed Iraq.

By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique. As a former chief weapons inspector of the U.N. has said, “The fundamental problem with Iraq remains the nature of the regime, itself. Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.”

There’s nothing quite like describing someone else’s capabilities to motivate building your own.

In this speech, George W. Bush cited satellite surveillance and scientific intelligence sources that suggested an Iraqi nuclear weapons capability, and the need to act against it. Years later, we know that no WMDs were found during that period, yet the “evidence” was good enough for the administration to motivate an invasion.

A national security threat creates a certain gravity that no one escape. While propaganda is more of a linear force pushing a population towards an opinion, a NATSEC threat narrative aligns and pulls all concerns into one bottomless pit. The NATSEC threat builds a perception that the enemy is everywhere, all powerful, and you are not powerful enough to defend yourself today. The same concept not only sells jets and missiles to the military, it also sells cars and makeup. You’re never good enough.

The national security argument is the black hole of public persuasion. Not even free energy can escape.

Is this what The Age of Disclosure is doing? In other interviews, Elizondo describes a threat as a combination of capability and intent. The film shows that UAP clearly have capability beyond the best systems of the US Air Force, but intent isn’t yet determined. The question may seem silly, but we know the US has defense contractors that sell asymmetric advantage and strategic surprise as their bread and butter. Secrecy is a valuable currency, and the public are always the last to know.

Why does the film clearly omit the name of Lockheed Martin and instead use a placeholder? Other agencies get to proudly show off their seals. Why isn’t our NATSEC darling getting to show off too? Are we not yet ready to talk about the Palantir in the room?

Another still from the film. Lockheed Martin Skunkworks has major connections to exotic tech and UFO crash retrievals, yet they are never mentioned by name in the film.

Should you Watch The Age of Disclosure?

The Age of Disclosure is a movie for the UFO-agnostic viewer as well as the UFO-curious viewer, and it presents a baseline of legitimacy to the topic. While it’s sparse on case evidence, it gains credibility from high ranking government talking heads, and it doesn’t fall into the same stigma traps that other media do. There are no alien faces that subconsciously signal the viewer to scroll past. That being said, the claims are extraordinary, and I guarantee if you haven’t been following the topic, you will be surprised by what is mentioned to Congress under oath.

If you are following the development of the Epstein story, the AI bubble, and the messaging around both, this film might be for you. Look at its messaging, look at what the interviews say vs what they show and the discrepancies between them. UAP have the potential to be another pillar of conspiracy equal to the Epstein files cover up. As someone who has closely followed the sworn testimony of credible witnesses in four intelligence and oversight committee hearings on UAP, I personally think there is a lot of truth in the subject, and it is absolutely relevant today. The UAP threat narrative has the potential to be compelling to both TV news consumers and even those of us with less trust in government. Here, the US government plays both the hero and the villain, a dynamic that no doubt helped elect our current president.

I believe the film’s overall message is weak, but it will linger as a baseline for viewers to compare to in the future. Why else would we have a highly marketed, heavily government-voiced documentary about UFOs?