It’s a stormy day outside Fort Mason in San Francisco here on Friday, 22 November, with an atmospheric river that triggers flash flood warnings in the city. However, there’s a measured sense of calm inside, where hundreds of attendees from around the country have gathered for the prestigious Sol Foundation symposium to hear leading experts report on what we know about UFOs, aka UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), and how Congress and civil society can act to seek more answers. Formed in 2023, the Sol Foundation is a Bay Area-based think tank on a mission to lead cutting-edge public research with a socially responsible approach to better understanding the cosmological and political implications of UAP (aka UFOs).
UFOs have been a fixture of pop culture in Hollywood at least since 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, which suggested Earth’s visitors are gravely concerned about humanity’s potential misuse of atomic energy and nuclear weapons. Alien invasion movies were a common theme of the Cold War era in the 1950s and 1960s until Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind served as a game changer in 1977 with a tale of benevolent visitors. Longtime legend even suggests that the climactic extraterrestrial contact event was based on a genuine incident at an American Air Force base. French scientist and ufologist Jacques Vallee – the basis for the character portrayed in CE3K by Francois Truffaut – now serves as an Emeritus Advisor for the Sol Foundation.
Has Hollywood been utilized as a vehicle for a “slow drip disclosure” process over the decades? Some would also point to films such as Men in Black and Contact, which represent a yin and yang of the intergalactic situation in 1997. “You ever see the movie Casablanca? It’s the same thing, except no Nazis,” Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent K character wryly explains in MIB (with Spielberg as executive producer). Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey flipped the script in Contact (based on the Carl Sagan novel) with a serious examination of the spiritual and religious ramifications humanity will face upon learning that we are not alone in the cosmos.
Then there’s The X-Files, the iconic TV show aired from 1993 to 2002 with FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully pursuing UFOs and other paranormal mysteries with a weekly tagline proclaiming “The truth is out there.” A classic 1996 episode “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” even slyly referenced Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when a dazed Air Force pilot who flies a reverse-engineered flying saucer uses his fork to shape a plate of mashed potatoes to look like Devil’s Tower in Wyoming (just as the Richard Dreyfus character did in CE3K.) Steven Spielberg also served as executive producer of the ambitious Taken mini-series on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2002-03, which functioned sort of like an extended CE3K sequel in tracing UFO and ET abduction lore from the Roswell Incident in 1947 to the modern day.
An X-Files reboot with two more seasons in 2016 and 2018 bookended a groundbreaking 2017 New York Times article revealing a 21st-century Pentagon program that sought to investigate UFOs. This revelation spurred renewed congressional interest, leading to a new UAP Task Force at the Pentagon, new congressional hearings on UAP in 2023 and 2024, and, it seems, the formation of the Sol Foundation last year.
“Led by some of the most prominent and thoughtful voices on UAP from government, academia, and technology, Sol’s meeting this year reinvigorates the UAP conversation by showcasing new scientific discoveries, proposals for government reform, ideas for social action, and visions of technological innovation,” the Foundation promised. Here follows a PopMatters special report on the first day of the symposium.
The morning session opens with “Update from the Frontlines: Aviation Safety and UAP”, with former Navy pilot Ryan Graves in conversation with journalist Leslie Kean (one of the co-authors of the 2017 New York Times story.) A follow up NYT story featured Graves, who in 2019 became the first active duty pilot to come forward about encounters with UAP he’d had off the Eastern Seaboard circa 2014-2015. Frustrated and disillusioned with the stigma that came with trying to report and investigate what he saw, Graves launched the nonprofit organization Americans for Safe Aerospace. He also testified at the captivating July 2023 hearing on UAP.
Kean notes that the community owes big thanks to Lue Elizondo, the Intelligence Community whistleblower who was a focus of the 2017 New York Times story after he resigned from the Pentagon to raise awareness about UAP. “There wouldn’t have been any New York Times stories if he hadn’t come forward,” Kean says.
“A Proposal for a Whole of Government UAP Policy” features retired Navy Rear Admiral Dr. Tim Gallaudet, who also serves on Sol’s Advisory Board and testified along with Elizondo and others at the November 2024 Congressional hearing on UAP. Gallaudet’s testimony included his conclusion that at least some UAP are “nonhuman higher intelligence”.
“The failure of the Executive Branch to share UAP information with Congress is an infringement on the legislative branch that undermines separation powers and may be creating a constitutional crisis,” Gallaudet warned at the hearing. A picture is shown of him in the Oval Office with President Trump in 2018, prompting Gallaudet to say he doesn’t want to work” with that man again” but that we now have to deal with him. Staying on for a Q&A with Graves and Kean, Gallaudet fields a question about UAP incidents at nuclear weapons facilities and recommends the book UFOs and Nukes by Robert Hastings (a witness to the famous 1967 UFO incident at the Malmstrom AFB in Montana.)
A short break enables attendees to mingle and chat up semi-celebrities of the ufology scene, like intrepid podcaster Chrissy Newton from The Debrief, who also co-hosts the Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction television show on Discovery. Hollywood producer Bryce Zabel is also on the scene, co-host of the Need to Know podcast and the creative force behind the 1996-1997 television series Dark Skies (based around the intriguing premise that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was related to the UFO coverup.)
A compelling panel follows with Sol Foundation executive director Peter Skafish moderating a conversation on “The Politics of Executive Branch UAP Secrecy” with Dr. Eric Davis and Kirk McConnell. Davis is known in the ufology community as a Pentagon astrophysics consultant/insider who has given classified briefings to members of Congress, while McConnell is a Capitol Hill insider with decades of experience as a Congressional aide. Davis describes how it became “irrefutable” to dismiss the existence of UAP retrieval and study programs after conferring on them with so many people in classified settings. “There’s a there there,” Davis says. He explains that these Secret Access Programs (SAPs) are kept hidden from Congress and that the Gang of Eight is only briefed on the basic parameters, a policy dating back to the Eisenhower administration.
“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” Skafish says, asking whether Presidents know about all of this. Davis responds that some Presidents have been briefed, while others have been deemed untrustworthy regarding the SAPs. He says Nixon, Reagan, Kennedy, and Eisenhower were briefed, while Bill Clinton was not. He adds that Carter got a briefing and that Jay Stratton [former director of the UAP Task Force] briefed Trump on the UAP problem.
Yoshiharu Asakawa, former General Secretary of the UAP Caucus in the Parliament of Japan, follows with a talk on “Japan’s Role in Creating International Cooperation on the UAP Issue”. It becomes challenging to get a clear handle on what he’s saying due to a translator speaking concurrently while he’s talking in Japanese. However, one thing that stands out is a reference to the Fukushima UFOs (subject of a 2023 episode in the Netflix series Encounters.) Similar to multiple incidents at American nuclear weapons sites, witnesses in the episode reported seeing UFOs that they felt were acting to mitigate the radioactive damage during the catastrophic meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011.
The afternoon session is based on the theme of “Understanding the Enigma: The Role of Philosophical Investigation and UAP”. Peter Skafish and Leslie Kean return for a discussion on “The Relational and Communicative Problem with UAP”. Skafish (a sociocultural anthropologist) says Disclosure isn’t about a President holding a press conference but rather making space to absorb, acknowledge, and understand what is known. “We actually want democracy on this, not just truth,” he explains of Sol’s ambitious agenda. Kean raises the issue of UAP at nuclear sites again. She notes how Jacques Vallee’s research indicates UAP incidents are rarely random and usually appear to be targeted, saying we must consider whether such UAP incidents have been conveying a message.
“Because of UAP secrecy and the stigma, we have been forced to stay in the recesses of our own minds,” Skafish adds, challenging everyone to lend a greater ear to experiencers. This sentiment wins an emphatic round of applause, suggesting many in the audience may have experienced close encounters of their own.
UAP and “Human Security” with Dr. Alexander Wendt of Ohio State University
A most compelling presentation comes from Dr. Alexander Wendt, Mershon Professor of International Security and Professor of Political Science at Ohio State, on the topic of UAP and “Human Security. Wendt has been a thought leader in the ufology field at least since the 2008 publication of his groundbreaking paper “Sovereignty and the UFO”, in which he laid out the socio-political basis for Uncle Sam’s long-standing taboo on the topic.
When Wendt and co-writer/mentor Raymond Duvall first presented the paper in a public forum at Ohio State in 2006, Wendt argued that UFO skepticism is essentially political – as an effect of modern sovereignty and state authority – rather than based on scientific study. “By refusing to go away, the UFO provides consistent data that can’t be ignored… Only breaking the taboo in public will solve the problem,” Wendt concluded that day in 2006, declaring that “the UFO is fundamentally a political problem, not a scientific one”.
Wendt checks in remotely from Columbus but comes through loud and clear. He opens by noting that the biggest takeaway from the much-anticipated Pentagon/UAP Task Force report released in 2021 was the acknowledgment that UAPs are real and may pose a challenge to national security. Wendt clarifies that “assuming the worst” is the spirit of his talk, which is based on a short book he’s been working on that picks up where that 2021 report left off.
Working through a powerpoint presentation titled “The Last Humans: UFOs and National Security”, Wendt explains that the threat is not them [UFOs], but us and society’s auto-immune reaction that could undermine the social contract and trigger the collapse of the state. He suggests there’s no real evidence of a threat to harm and, therefore, no actual physical threat to national security. The focus of his research has thus been on how the discovery of ETs would be “an ontological threat of the highest order”, which makes anthropocentrism “our achilles heel”.
Wendt moves on to a “what if” scenario on UAP as an ontological security threat and three levels of shock that would theoretically follow: 1) Falsification of anthropocentrism; 2) Discovering our insecurity; 3) the Impotence of the state revealed. “What comes next?” Wendt asks in exploration of how a global auto-immune reaction would play out. He notes four elements of response that would take place: Wonder (“the ET lovers crowd”); Fear (“the ET haters”); Greed (the opportunity to prey on people); and Polarization (potentially leading to disruption of social cohesion, state collapse, marshall law and a garrison state.)
“WHAT is to be done?” Wendt asks in the end, comparing our situation with the last tribes deep in the Amazon forest that still haven’t been touched by modernity. Restating that “the UFO problem is a political problem”, he acknowledges there may have been some wisdom in the UFO taboo: “I’m not saying we should go back to the taboo, but we need a solution to the problem.” He raises the slow drip disclosure concept and says some secrecy has probably been justified. “I’m still an advocate of full disclosure eventually,” Wendt adds before explaining that his current book project has led him to see the case for slow disclosure or else there’s a real danger of ontological shock to the system that could lead to fascism and a garrison state.
The next session, “Introducing the Archives of the Impossible”, features Dr. Jeff Kripal and Karin Austin. A member of Sol’s Social Science Advisory Board and the J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religion and Associate Dean of Humanities at Rice University, Kripal has spearheaded the formation of the “Archives of the Impossible” at Rice (an impressive collection of paranormal studies including Jacques Vallee’s papers). Kripal brings up Close Encounters of the Third Kind, noting that Spielberg followed Vallee’s research closely in the storyline, until the contact event at the end (suggesting that there hasn’t been such a historical incident, yet seemingly overlooking the lore indicating that perhaps there has been.)
Austin is a self-professed experiencer who worked closely with psychologist John Mack and is now director of the John E. Mack Institute. She speaks to how a holistic understanding of UAP cannot be fully understood by solely taking a materialistic approach, stating a need to make a Copernican blow to the government’s reductionist approach. This sentiment wins her a big round of applause.
A session on “Religion and UAP: An Exploration” features Dr. Stephen C. Finley, Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Louisiana State University. He offers some interesting commentary on how UFOs have come into pop culture through songs like P-Funk’s “Mothership Connection” and “Unfunky UFO”. He speaks of how black traditions see UFOs as a black experience and that the slave trade can be compared with UFO abduction.
Finley also references legendary jazz artist Sun Ra, a trailblazer who uses his music to connect themes between ancient Africa and outer space with a visionary Afrofuturism. The citation of Sun Ra hits with a notable synchronicity since the Sun Ra Arkestra are in town for three shows at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall on this same weekend of 22-24 November (including a rare take on night three of their song “UFO”, “take me where I wanna go…”)
Dr. Jacques Vallee was scheduled to close the day with a highly anticipated “Plenary Fireside Conversation”, but it’s announced that he cannot be present. Physicist Mitch Randall from Operation SkyWatch steps in as a pinch-hitter, speaking of the organization’s mission to establish the existence of UFOs by measuring their accelerations and maneuvers with a citizen-led radar network. He says the concept was inspired by what Peter Davenport from the National UFO Reporting Center started in 1995. Randall concludes by saying we need to end the government monopoly on radar data, citing how we can’t even FOIA the FAA on the famous 2008 Stephensville, Texas incident. for example.
Conclusions
Reflecting on Sol’s mission, a superb overview of the socio-political issues in play with UAP is available in Sol Foundation executive director Peter Skafish’s insightful new whitepaper, “The Prospect of Executive Branch UAP Secrecy: The Harm to Congress and Potential Remedies”. Skafish has assembled a comprehensive historical guide that functions like a trail of breadcrumbs for curious investigators. “The most significant data are records and corroborating testimony of UAP events that occurred from the 1940s through the 1970s at US Air Force bases and other federal government facilities housing nuclear weapons and nuclear energy research programs,” Skafish notes, including a list of such incidents from 1962-77.
Potential remedies Skafish puts forth include a Congressional investigation modeled on the Church Committee, which investigated abuses by the CIA in 1975. He also digs into the existential ramifications at stake for humanity. “The UAP presence arguably entails not only an existential threat but potential existential benefits, and it is in the interest of the legislative branch and the American people to be aware of and participating in decisions about these,” Skafish explains, going on to note that UAP secrecy has likely set Congress back by decades in work to determine federal policy on science, technology, and energy. “The understanding of physics, material science, and energy necessary to account for the performance characteristics of UAP vehicles would be revolutionary (perhaps several times over) if achieved by human beings.”
These inherently revolutionary aspects of “Disclosure” lead many observers to be highly skeptical of the powers that be. The American political climate is set to shift to the far right in 2025, with a President who promised Big Oil bosses he’d scrap climate laws and roll back environmental regulations in exchange for their financial support in the 2024 campaign. Yet any disclosure about the energy systems Earth’s visitors use to get here would be antithetical to longstanding fossil fuel monopolies. Genuine disclosure would, therefore, seem to require a boldly progressive political agenda, the opposite of what appears to be on deck.
Dr. Alexander Wendt’s concern regarding the political problem of UAP and America’s vulnerability to an ontological shock that could open the door to a fascist response, therefore, stands out as a pressing issue for humanity. The Skafish whitepaper touches on this as well.
“Unveiling secrets of world-changing significance will matter little if they are received by people unable to distinguish between science and pseudoscience, investigative journalism and conspiracy theories, and populist demagoguery and reasoned political discourse,” Skafish writes. “The effect on a government already deemed illegitimate by broad swathes of its citizens could be devastating, as fears of ‘aliens’ and further denial and deception from the United States government could be exploited by authoritarians in search of new resources for manipulation. It will take a balanced approach to disclosure, guided by academia, science, religious, and other civil organizations, to avoid this scenario.”
This high-level view resonates as a thoroughly researched and inspiring handle on the promise of UAP, as opposed to current political discourse focused on a national security threat to American airspace. Members of the Congressional UAP Caucus would do well to study the Sol Foundation’s work and broaden their ongoing investigations with the balanced approach Skafish prescribes if they genuinely want to gain the trust and support of the many citizens who have been studying the Phenomenon longer than they have.
Sol’s work also features a scientific wing led by Dr. Gary Nolan, Rachford, and Carlota A. Harris, Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Executive Director of the Board for the Sol Foundation, Nolan’s cutting-edge medical expertise has made him a go-to source for those studying suspected UAP materials and the effects of UAP encounters on experiencers. His intriguing work must be the subject of another article, as the Sol Foundation is clearly just getting started.
“One of my projects that I hope to see through Sol is to de-fictionalize the subject [of UAP],” Peter Skafish tells PopMatters. Another intriguing project he mentions is writing a plan on “how Congress could do Disclosure itself, both legally and procedurally”. Bold and creative action spurred by the public and led by Congress will likely be necessary to break through an Executive Level truth embargo that has been in play for three-quarters of a century.