This week, the Pentagon declassified another large cache of official documents and videos regarding unidentified flying objects. Spanning back decades, these are reports of lights and crafts pulling off maneuvers that should be impossible. These anomalies include bizarre, geometrical formations or pulling off 90 degree turns mid-air.
In a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump said every administration has failed to provide transparency on the subject of aliens, except his. “With these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’” posted Trump. “Have Fun and Enjoy!”
DOW-UAP-PR38, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2013
The United States Central Command submitted a report of an unidentified anomalous phenomenon to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) consisting of one minute and 46 seconds of video footage from an infrared sensor… pic.twitter.com/LRqTqdEQ6J
— John Greenewald, Jr. (@theblackvault) May 8, 2026
Unsurprisingly inaccurate, the latest details are only the latest in a series. The new footage is consistent with the 2017 documents uncovered by The New York Times and Blink-182 singer Tom Delonge (honestly, cross my heart). It’s eerie to hear steel-nerved pilots a little perplexed by something a few clicks ahead of them, but these strange videos don’t do much to affirm our place in the universe. In 2023, fighter pilots scrambled over detected UFOs across America. These turned out to be weather balloons, which some officials blamed on Chinese surveillance. Largely, it exposed how these alarms can be more related to more sophisticated detection technology, and the panic around them an attempt to rally funding around new military gear.
In a YouTube video, former president Barack Obama said he saw no evidence of space aliens at Area 51, but is convinced they’re somewhere out there. Trump claimed that particular interview was an illegal breach of classified information. During her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton promised to declassify alien info as well, dredging up memories of her meetings in the ‘90s with UFO buff Laurance Rockefeller. It wasn’t enough to sway conspiracy sets to vote for her, as they were now more concerned with Hollywood cannibals.
As bad as Trump is at keeping a secret, these new reports haven’t quelled skepticism among the devout. “I don’t think they’re trying to hide anything, but the stuff that they’re releasing is stuff that we’ve known for, like, forever, almost,” MUFTON Texas director John Ege told the BBC, who said he suspects a fifth of his peers will call these releases “misdirection.”
In the ‘90s you could be convinced that there were fewer things more important than the government’s classified space dude knowledge. High profile alien abductees like Travis Walton and Whitley Strieber launched a uniformly obsessed counterculture, hitting peaks with Art Bell’s Coast to Coast and Chris Carter’s The X-Files. Now we have more documentation that we know what to deal with, but post-9/11 conspiracy culture has twisted itself into terrestrial anxieties. We will simply have to look elsewhere for little green dudes.