Reality Should Not be Classified: A Call for Action on UAP Disclosure
Today, June 9, 2026, a press conference of lawmakers and UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) whistleblowers in Washington DC, called for action on UAP disclosure (for access to its full video, click here). Shortly afterwards, I was asked by Nichole Berlie from NewsNation to share my perspective on this press conference. Below is a transcript of that interview (which is also accessible in video format here). Nichole’s questions are labeled by NB and my answers by AL.
***
NB: Here to discuss the UAP disclosure effort and what we have seen from the government release in recent weeks, Professor of Science at Harvard University, Avi Loeb. Always so great to talk to you.
So, several lawmakers were speaking at this afternoon’s press conference. I’d like to hear from one of them. This is Missouri Republican Congressman, Eric Burlison. Let’s listen to some of what he said.
Eric Burlison: “We are no longer asking hypothetical questions anymore. Congress is requesting specific records and videos. These agencies and contractors know that we know that they exist and we’re going to get them released. We continue to receive credible claims of recovered craft and reverse engineering programs that may have operated for decades outside of any oversight.
Those claims point to specific facilities, contractors, records, and people. Congress has a constitutional duty to follow them. And that duty does not vanish because someone stamped a document classified 30 years ago.”
All right, so Professor Loeb: what is your reaction to today’s call for more transparency?
AL: Thanks for having me. Obviously, the main tension is with national security priorities.
The U.S. might be developing new technologies that it doesn’t want the world to know about, and some people notice them. Even within the government, there might be employees who are not involved in those programs. In addition, there may be crash retrieval and reverse engineering efforts that involve retrieving technological gadgets from adversarial nations and as well as pilots from adversarial nations.
So, when we hear about biological entities in crash sites, the fundamental question is: are we dealing with human-made technologies and with real human pilots? As you know, there are Nordics among humans — and this was one type of biological entities that were mentioned in testimonies about UAP. And so the fundamental question: are we dealing with human-made technologies and humans in those crash sites or something else?
Of course, to find out we need to see the evidence. But if other people within the government know that we are dealing with human-made things, they might hide it just because it’s a matter of national security. So that’s where the tension comes in.
It is completely reasonable for the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies to secure data that is of national security importance, as long as it’s not very old. If we are dealing with what happened 50 years ago, then it’s not relevant to the battlefield today. And of course, if we have evidence that indicates a technological object that is not human made, that should be obviously shared with the public. As a scientist, I’ll be delighted to help the government figure it out.
NB: Professor Loeb, I spoke with you on this program a few weeks ago during that latest UAP data dump, that latest release from the government. What are your thoughts on the information and files related to UAPs that the government has most recently declassified?
AL: So far, I haven’t seen clear evidence for a technological object that is not human made. Mostly, the data is not good enough, as we don’t know the distance to objects and some crucial information was redacted. At any event, whatever was disclosed so far is not convincing as being not human made or natural. There was no clear evidence for something that goes well beyond the capabilities of human-made technologies.
But perhaps the best is yet to come. Perhaps the government has the most classified data indicating something beyond this earth. That’s possible. I’m not excluding that. But I do think that there needs to be a group of people that has access to classified data. It’s not about releasing it to the public, but about figuring out whether everything that we see, that we recorded, could be explained in terms of human-made technologies or in terms of natural things here on Earth.
If whoever looks at that realizes that there is something else there, then I think that this insight should be publicly disclosed. The only concern we should have is national security. And it’s a serious concern, because if the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon cannot really figure out the nature of human-made objects — it means that we have holes in the defense of the United States. There are swarms of orbs that could be swarms of drones from China. These are serious matters and we have strategic sites that are of national security importance that we have to protect.
NB: Absolutely. Harvard Professor Avi Loeb, always so great to speak with you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, former director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
Professional website:
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/
Social media:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoeb
https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCd
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
