Trump Administration Set to Launch New UFO Information Offensive
The Trump administration is leaning into UFO mythology. But many analysts believe the launch of a new government-sanctioned website about “aliens” is another wave of information warfare designed to distract and divide.
A new website being prepared by the White House has led to speculation about what information it may contain, as well as the motives behind the project. In mid-March 2026, the Executive Office of the President registered the domains aliens.gov and alien.gov, which currently go to a placeholder website. According to statements made by several administration officials, the site is intended to be a cross-government clearinghouse for all things “extraterrestrial.”
This, of course, means different things to different audiences. And the potential for ambiguity has many analysts concerned that the new website will bolster false claims that advance societal division while enriching the ecosystem of “disclosure entrepreneurs” that has sprung up around the topic.
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, former head of the Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), responded to our request for comment, saying the “website, and the commentary of the Administration on aliens, is more theatrics to distract the American public from reality. It is more evidence that this Administration bases its actions and decisions on conspiracy and fiction rather than evidence and fact.”
Kirkpatrick, who stepped down from the AARO role in December 2023, was tasked with reviewing reports of unidentified aerial phenomena from across government. He concluded that while there was no evidence of any “alien” involvement, there was a distinct network of UFO entrepreneurs and “true believers” that was seeking to use government to legitimize its agenda.
And Kirkpatrick believes the White House has now been pulled into this effort. In his comment for this story he said the administration “continues to undermine the national security professionals who are fulfilling the Congressionally mandated mission of AARO because the conspiracists don’t like the evidence being produced contrary to their story.”
Asked who is responsible for the content of an executive-branch .gov site, Chris Butera, Acting Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told America 2.0 that the agency “manages the .gov registry to ensure that only verified U.S.-based government organizations receive these trusted domains” but “does not generally review or audit how government organizations use their registered domains and does not control content on all .gov websites.”
The Growing Chorus
While no verifiable scientific evidence has emerged to bolster claims of extraterrestrial or non-human intelligence here on Earth, there is a growing chorus of chatter about aliens, “disclosure,” and connections to other supernatural phenomena coming from a rag-tag collection of voices.
Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN-2) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL-13) have led the vanguard, with Burchett founding the House UAP Caucus and regularly asserting that he has seen evidence of non-human crafts in classified briefings.
Luna recently told a podcaster, “I have seen evidence in a SCIF that leads me to believe there are things we cannot explain. I have observed things that are of nonhuman origin and creation. That’s my opinion.” Luna has been promoting UAP claims for over a year, appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2025 speaking about “interdimensional beings.” She also participated in the 2025 documentary film, The Age of Disclosure, which speculated about the recovery of crashed alien technology.
Luna has also drawn attention for her close associations with Russia; she has served as a surrogate for Kremlin priorities and hosted four sanctioned Russian State Duma deputies at the Capitol. In February 2026, the Robert Lansing Institute publicly stated that “the probability that Anna Paulina Luna is being used by Russian intelligence as part of an influence operation must be assessed as high,” renewing questions about whether UAP “disclosure” is also part of a long-running Russian information warfare effort.
Mark Pilkington, a British writer and author of the book Mirage Men, which chronicles the social history of the UFO phenomenon, suggested specific electoral motivations. “As QAnon did for Trump’s first election campaign, the administration’s appeal to the wider cultural conspirasphere — incorporating UFOs, JFK conspiracies, Havana Syndrome, anti-vaxxers and all the other flavors of suspicion — is an attempt to corral the broader, sprawling conspiracy vote under a broader Trumpian banner of anti-Deep-State disruption and iconoclasm,” Pilkington told America 2.0.
Various associates of venture capitalist Peter Thiel are also involved. Jesse Michels, a salaried employee and venture fund manager at Thiel’s family office firm, Thiel Capital, hosts the “American Alchemy” podcast, which has featured most of the top UFO scenesters and entrepreneurs — including David Grusch, Karl Nell, Hal Puthoff, Lue Elizondo, Diana Pasulka, Garry Nolan, Jacques Vallée, Avi Loeb, Richard Dolan, Eric Weinstein, and Ross Coulthart.
In March, Vice President J.D. Vance, who has been personally backed by Thiel, told podcaster Benny Johnson that he was “obsessed with the UFO files.” He told Johnson, “I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion.” Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019; the reference to “demons” closely matches the eschatological writing of René Girard, the centerpiece of Thiel’s recent lectures on the “Antichrist.”
Separately, longtime UFO activist Steven Greer has publicly claimed credit for shaping the disclosure directive itself, citing a February 9, 2025 “Memorandum to President Donald J. Trump” that he says he submitted through “people close to him” — and which he now sells as a hardcover briefing document.
Pastor Larry Ragland of Solid Rock Church in Birmingham, Alabama claimed in a video that went viral this week that Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) had called in by speakerphone to a February gathering of evangelical pastors and told the group that aliens “seeded us here” and “Jesus was invented by them.”
Burlison flatly denied saying any such thing — stating he joined only to “thank pastors for their work” and that he does “NOT know what the strange objects in the skies are.” Ragland apologized within 72 hours, conceding the alien-creator framing was his own opinion, not anything Burlison had said. No identifiable U.S. government official briefing the meeting has been publicly named, and no memo, invitation, or attendee list has surfaced.
Embattled FBI Director Kash Patel has also weighed in on the upcoming document dump. On May 5, he told podcaster Sean Hannity that the President had “stood up an interagency process with the Department of War leading the effort” to “get out the documentation… not just from the FBI, from the IC and everywhere else.” He continued, “They’re going to be publicly releasing this information very soon. We are all for it.”
The same day, former President Barack Obama told talk show host Stephen Colbert that he had seen no documentary evidence of any extraterrestrial life in his time as president. In February, Obama had made comments intended to convey the statistical likelihood that life exists somewhere in the universe. Those comments went viral, and may have played a role in prompting Trump to advance the administration’s disclosure effort.
What Happens Next
We reached out to the White House with a request for comment on Dr. Kirkpatrick’s negative assessment of the proposed new website. Anna Kelly, Special Assistant to the President and White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary, after first inquiring about our deadline, responded simply, “Stay tuned! 👽” — repeating a post she had made on X several weeks earlier.
We also reached out to the offices of multiple members of the House and Senate who have been involved in advancing this effort, including Reps. Burchett, Luna, and Burlison, without response.
But it seems likely that the aliens.gov website (which is, at the moment, hosted on a managed Wordpress account) will promulgate a deluge of new documents of questionable provenance pulled from across the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, FBI, and CIA. Undoubtedly, this will lead to a feeding frenzy of ad-hoc analysis and speculation which will feed UFO entrepreneurs for decades to come.
The effects on society are likely to be highly corrosive. Just as previous conspiracy domains from JFK to 9/11 to Epstein have led to circular reporting and self-healing belief systems impervious to facts or logic, the same effects will be felt here. Indeed, this has long been the case — UFOlogy has sparked strong beliefs for a century at least, particularly in America.
It seems likely that a major new document dump, particularly if it is presented in an un-curated fashion and without full context or fact-checking, will advance an epistemological meltdown that is already well underway. Rather than inform, the goal here seems to be to overwhelm and demoralize an already exhausted population.
Many will suggest that a UFO frenzy will distract from the Epstein files or from Trump’s failed war in Iran. Indeed, that is also true, but it also pushes the window of acceptable discourse so far into the realm of the speculative that normal political concerns are trivial in comparison, giving all authoritarians more breathing room.
The biggest winner, however, might be director Steven Spielberg. His big-budget UFO film Disclosure Day starring Emily Blunt is set for release on June 12th by Universal Pictures. It’s hard to imagine a more viral launch campaign than a White House-backed tie-in.
Last night, Rep. Luna wrote only “8am” in a post on her personal X account, leading some of her followers to believe that the aliens.gov site may launch as soon as 8:00 am, on Friday, May 8. ■
UPDATE — May 8, 8:30am: The Department of War has released new UFO information on its website war.gov/ufo, which is currently crashing— the aliens.gov site is not yet live.
Outreach and FOIA. For this piece, America 2.0 sought comment from the following individuals and offices. On-record responses were received from: former AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick (April 28, 2026); Marco DiSandro, External Affairs Specialist at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), conveying an on-record statement attributed to Chris Butera, Acting Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity (April 28, 2026); White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly (April 30, 2026 — see body); and Mark Pilkington, author of Mirage Men.
The following offices did not respond to written requests for comment as of publication: Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN-2), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL-13), Eric Burlison (R-MO), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Andy Ogles (R-TN), Brandon Gill (R-TX), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Summer Lee (D-PA), Dave Min (D-CA), and Jasmine Crockett (D-TX); House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer (R-KY); House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA); Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Mike Rounds (R-SD), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY); the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office press desk; the Office of the Secretary of War (formerly Defense) Public Affairs office, regarding the status of Volume II of the AARO Historical Record; and the Office of Management and Budget Communications office, regarding the DOTGOV Act and OMB Memorandum M-23-10 adjudication of the aliens.gov and alien.gov registrations.
America 2.0 has filed Freedom of Information Act requests in connection with this piece. Six requests were filed on April 25, 2026: with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (DHS), for the get.gov domain-registration packets for aliens.gov and alien.gov and related interagency correspondence; with the Office of the Secretary of Defense / Joint Staff FOIA Requester Service Center (two requests — one for records held by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office concerning Volume II suppression, the AARO deputy-director vacancy, EOP routing, and disclosure-network contacts; the other for non-AARO records of the Office of the Secretary of War, OUSD(I&S), and the Pentagon Press Office relating to the February 19, 2026 disclosure directive); with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, for parallel directive-correspondence and EOP-routing records; with the Department of the Army Records Management and Declassification Agency, for personnel records concerning Col. Karl E. Nell; and with the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, for whistleblower-reprisal and senior-official-investigation records concerning Col. Nell. A seventh request, filed May 7, 2026, was directed to the Office of the Secretary of War for records of liaison between the White House Faith Office and Pentecostal-broadcast pastor-outreach figures concerning UAP disclosure. America 2.0 will update this story as new records are received.
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