A long-form piece in TIME magazine covers nearly every aspect of the recent push toward UFO/UAP disclosure. The approach is laudably open, and the tone is respectful.
The latest sign that the UAP/UFO phenomenon is being normalized is a long-read article in TIME magazine, published August 6, whose headline summarizes what the piece itself represents: “America Is Finally Taking Extraterrestrials Seriously.”
The article’s starting point is the U.S. government’s latest – and so far the most far-reaching – official move toward disclosure. That’s the release of hundreds of documents and videos confirming that many of the rumors of unexplained objects moving in seemingly impossible ways, and other phenomena of “high strangeness,” are true.
The piece then traces the path that led to the Pentagon’s release of UAP files, from spectacular sworn testimony in congressional hearings held from 2023 to 2025, to President Barack Obama’s offhand remark that aliens “are real, but I haven’t seen them” – a comment that purportedly prompted President Donald Trump to order authorities to begin identifying and releasing documents.
Writer Jeffrey Kluger also mentions Steven Spielberg’s film “Disclosure Day,” released in June, which portrays a government cover-up of extraterrestrial visitations being exposed. Around the same time, the UAP Science Advisory Council was established, led by Harvard astrophysicist and cosmologist Avi Loeb. Many of the people featured in the article are household names in the UAP community – with one conspicuous omission: David Grusch, arguably the most pivotal security apparatus whistleblower.
Kluger, who covers space, climate, and science at TIME and is the author of 12 books, notes that the UAP phenomenon is one of few truly bipartisan issues in the U.S.: A vast majority of both Democrats and Republicans want the government to release more information.
His piece doesn’t claim that every documented sighting is of nonhuman origin – some may have prosaic explanations – but it does explore how the public might react, psychologically and spiritually, to an official announcement that a nonhuman intelligence is present on the planet.
It appears much has changed since December 2017, when The New York Times ran two articles that proved seminal in gradually destigmatizing the topic after at least half a century of ridicule.
Congress’s disclosure efforts have advanced to the point that few now question the existence of numerous unexplained sightings documented by the U.S. military. Much of the debate now centers on whether – and how – all classified material on the phenomenon should be released, and on how to protect whistleblowers within the intelligence community and military, who remain bound by non-disclosure agreements. An amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, proposed by Representative Eric Burlison, aims to ease both testimony and document release. The measure is known as the UAP Disclosure Act (UAPDA).
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Written by Anders Bolling
Edited by Liza Horan
