If It's Aliens, NASA Should Have a Seat at the Table

Asked about unidentified anomalous phenomena on NewsNation's *The Hill* on September 25, the NASA administrator Jared Isaacman gave the answer his predecessors spent years avoiding. 12 "My position going into every one of these: one, be open-minded," he told the host Blake Burman. "If it's aliens, I think NASA should have a seat at the table in this for sure." 13

The quote travelled. The rest of the answer is more useful.

Where he actually lands

Isaacman offered two ordinary explanations before any extraordinary one. Natural phenomena, first: "There are things that can happen just like natural phenomena that can be observed." 13 Then the one that has quietly become the Pentagon's own working hypothesis: "Is this potentially red technology? Is this an adversary that's testing some next generation propulsion?" 3 He said there was a good chance of a Sputnik moment — someone testing stealthy, next-generation systems — and added that "we did really well the last time that happened." 13

Asked where he leans, he leaned toward the phenomenon-that-can-happen end. 3

He also said NASA has had a seat at the table since the president ordered the files released through PURSUE earlier this year. 14 That is a statement about process, and it is the first time a NASA chief has said it on the record. 2

Why the agency matters here

In 2023 NASA's independent study panel found no evidence of extraterrestrial origin and said the real problem was data: nothing calibrated, nothing systematic, nothing a scientist could work with. The agency appointed a director of UAP research and then said very little. 1

An administrator who says "if it's aliens" out loud is not announcing aliens. He is announcing that the question is no longer radioactive inside the one agency that would actually have to answer it.

The Pentagon's sixth tranche of files had come out a week earlier. 4 NASA's instruments do not look at the atmosphere the way AARO's sensors do, and Isaacman's agency is also facing a flat budget and a crewed lunar programme. A seat at the table is cheap. What NASA would bring to it — calibrated, public, scientific observation — is the thing every official review since 2021 has said is missing. 15