Trump’s files, Obama’s remarks, and a renewed public focus on the skies
President Donald Trump’s direction to release government UFO and UAP files has renewed interest in whether extraterrestrial life exists and, if it does, what it might make of human behavior, the Associated Press reported. The renewed attention arrives as public curiosity about alien life is also being boosted by U.S. space ambitions, including NASA’s Artemis II mission, which launches Wednesday with four astronauts for a fly-around of the moon before returning to Earth.
The debate has been sharpened by political remarks earlier this year. In February, former President Barack Obama, responding to a podcaster’s question, said aliens are “real,” but that he ”hasn’t seen them” and that they ”’re not being kept at Area 51.” Trump later announced on social media that he was directing the release of government files because of “tremendous interest,” according to the AP reporting.
Interest in UFOs has long been intertwined with cultural history and with shifting labels for reported sightings. The report traced the modern fascination to stories such as the recovery of debris near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, and to later popular portrayals of flying saucers and humanoid “gray aliens.” It also noted that in recent years the term UFO has been supplemented by UAP—unidentified aerial phenomena or unidentified anomalous phenomena—often used in official discussions.
Public belief and what officials and scientists say about unknowns
The Associated Press said that a Pew Research Center survey in 2021 found about two-thirds of Americans said their best guess is that intelligent life exists on other planets. The same survey found about half of U.S. adults said UFOs reported by people in the military are “definitely” or “probably” evidence of intelligent life outside Earth. Bill Diamond, president and chief executive of the SETI Institute, said people do not want to assume they are alone in an extraordinarily large universe.
Diamond also pushed back on the idea that reports of unidentified objects automatically prove extraterrestrial origin. “We don’t want to think this is the only place in this extraordinarily and incomprehensibly large universe where life and intelligence and even technology have emerged,” he said, according to the AP report. He later added that “People observe things in the sky that they can’t immediately identify or recognize as either human engineering such as planes or drones or helicopters, or animals, such as birds, and therefore they don’t know what they are,” in comments carried by the AP.
The report said the Pentagon released hundreds of reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena in 2024, and that review gave no indications that their origins were extraterrestrial. Diamond said that government secrecy around UFOs and UAP is tied to national security concerns, pointing to defense-related sensors and the sensitivity of the underlying technology.
Personal sightings in Michigan and the question of “proof”
For some Americans, the renewed national attention has been paired with personal accounts of sightings. The AP reported that Debbie Dmytro saw a greenish object March 1 over Royal Oak, Michigan, and described her observations as something she did not associate with planes or helicopters. The report said Dmytro, a 56-year-old medical professional, acknowledged it could have been a commercial or delivery drone, but she said she had trouble explaining what she saw.
Dmytro also described an earlier sighting in 2023 in the same general area north of Detroit, saying she saw “Four yellow lights, yellowish golden lights and they were all flying very, very low.” She said they appeared about “100 feet (30 meters) up at their nearest,” and that she “’s” never seen anything so low “without any noise and flying in complete uniformity.” In her account to the AP, she said the lights left her unsure whether they were man-made or not.
Like others who have pressed for transparency, Dmytro said she wants more information about what the government knows. She told the AP: “I think there’s more information out there. I’m open to learning more,” adding, “I have an open mind. It’s always about scientific proof.”
National security concerns and what officials hope gets released
Beyond the personal accounts, the Associated Press report presented U.S. national security concerns as one reason data may remain limited. It said Diamond argued that much of the government’s secrecy is tied to sensitive defense capabilities that look at the sky and aircraft and sometimes pick up objects. The AP also cited comments from retired Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet, who said he participated in a 2024 congressional hearing on UAP disclosure and described prior classified material he had viewed.
Gallaudet told the AP that evidence “clearly shows there are UAP zipping around the airspace and in the oceans.” He said in the same account that “The nonhuman intelligence that operates them or controls them are absolutely real,” while also adding, “We’ve recovered crashed craft. We don’t know if they’re extraterrestrial in origin.” He also said he saw near-collisions in U.S. airspace and that it is “a real valid concern,” though he said the intent behind the interactions was unclear.
In the report, Gallaudet described how government data, including what he referred to as a “trove ” of UAP video held by the Navy, should be shared with scientists. He said: “When you look at these things in our airspace having near collisions with our aircraft, that’s a real valid concern,” and later asked: “When has ignorance ever been a good national strategy?”
Alien contact and what scientists say about intelligence
The AP report also included reactions from scientists and theorists about what alien life—if it exists—might imply for humanity. Avi Loeb, director of the Institute for Theory & Computation at Harvard and head of the university’s Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts, told the AP that he would view Earth with skepticism. “If I were looking at Earth from a distance, I would be pretty disappointed,” Loeb said. He added that “Most of our investing is dealing with conflicts to prevent other people from killing us or us killing others,” and pointed to the Ukraine war over territory as an example of how he does not see such behavior as evidence of intelligence.
The report also quoted astronomer Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan, who said the likelihood of life developing elsewhere is “fairly high” given the number of galaxies and stars, and who suggested that advanced beings would make themselves known if they traveled vast distances. Bergin told the AP: “I would think that they would look at us like we were crazy … but they would come out,” adding, “I mean, why come here otherwise unless you’re going to sit and observe.”
Diamond and Loeb both raised the idea that advanced civilizations might choose whether to interact. The AP said Diamond does not think any “true alien encounter could be kept secret,” and he argued that if interstellar travel exists, the decision to interact would be made openly: “If any civilization has mastered interstellar travel, they have technology and capabilities beyond our wildest comprehension,” he said. “If they want to interact, they will; if they don’t, they won’t. If they want to be seen, they will be, and if not, they won’t be!”