President Donald Trump announced that he is directing the Pentagon and other government agencies to release any government records related to the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
This announcement comes after recent comments made by former President Barack Obama in an interview with podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen, where Obama said that aliens are real, but he hasn’t seen them.
Since then, he has clarified in an Instagram post that he was referring to how it is statistically likely that extraterrestrial life exists due to the size of the universe, but he has never seen any evidence of it during his presidency. His remarks quickly circulated online and sparked debate about how much officials truly know about their existence.
Trump has now accused Obama of revealing sensitive government information and used the moment to advocate for greater transparency.
“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
There has been greater public interest in the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrial life since 2017, when former Pentagon and government officials released the Navy’s leaked footage of unknown objects. This led Congress to hold additional hearings in 2022 on UFOs and for the Pentagon to promise more transparency on the topic.
The Pentagon established the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office in 2022 under the Department of Defense.
Its goal is to synchronize efforts between the Department of Defense and other federal agencies to detect and identify unidentified objects. According to a 2024 annual report from the Pentagon, the AARO received a total of 1,652 reports of UFO sightings, where many were later determined to be drones, balloons or birds.
“It is also important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology,” Jon Kosloski, the director of the AARO, said in a news release.
Experts have noted that the release of these documents could be a difficult process due to national security concerns.
Shelley Wright, an observational and experimental astrophysicist, has said she expects the documents will be heavily redacted due to the sensitivity of the surveillance equipment the military uses for unidentified object sightings.
However, she added that the Trump administration could declassify documents from past decades, which would still allow scientists to analyze the data with modern technologies.
A specific timeline for when the records will be released and what information they will contain has yet to be announced.