NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is keeping an open mind about UFOs, stating that if any turn out to be aliens, he believes NASA should be involved.
The comments came during a recent interview with Blake Burman, host of NewsNation’s political panel show The Hill, when Burman specifically asked whether any of the military pilot reports and declassified Pentagon videos of objects with unusual flight characteristics could be extraterrestrial.
Isaacman recalled pushing for NASA to have a seat at the table when President Trump called for UFO and UAP files to be released earlier this year, an effort now known as the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, or PURSUE.
“My position going into every one of these: one, be open-minded,” Isaacman explained. “I mean, it is kind of our job to go out and try to answer the question ‘are we alone?’ And I said, ‘Look, if it’s aliens, I think NASA should have a seat at the table in this for sure.'”
He also compared the recent wave of sightings to the shock the U.S. felt when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957. In his view, some of what’s being seen could be a foreign adversary testing new propulsion.
Pressed on what his gut told him, Isaacman leaned toward two explanations. Many sightings are probably natural phenomena, he said, but there’s a good chance some are the result of a “Sputnik Moment” with foreign adversaries testing new stealthy or next-generation technologies.
He added that the solar system itself is still largely unexplored, pointing to the oceans on Saturn’s moon Enceladus and on Europa. “We couldn’t tell you conclusively that there isn’t life in our own backyard, let alone the billions of other stars in the Milky Way galaxy,” he elaborated.
Contextualizing NASA’s role amid the transparency push
Isaacman’s measured stance comes amid ongoing calls from lawmakers and former military personnel for greater government transparency regarding unidentified aerial phenomena. While Isaacman maintains that unexplained sightings likely point to natural phenomena or adversarial flight technologies, other figures have offered starkly different assessments.
In a recent appearance on Sean Hannity’s podcast, former Air Force geospatial intelligence specialist Dylan Borland asserted that the U.S. government possesses recovered non-human craft, echoing earlier claims made before Congress by former intelligence official David Grusch.
Those claims have fueled public appeals urging the White House to unseal unredacted files.
Addressing such concerns over government secrecy head-on, Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously stated that President Trump would not conceal concrete evidence of extraterrestrial encounters if it reached the Oval Office.
As the administration continues releasing declassified records under the PURSUE initiative, Isaacman’s comments emphasize NASA’s intent to ensure that any potential scientific discoveries remain part of the open scientific community rather than strictly classified defense intelligence.
Sources: Department of War, NASA, The Black Vault, Space