White House launches UAP Science Advisory Council push

A new UAP Science Advisory Council, formed after Harvard professor Avi Loeb’s visit to an intelligence office, will advise U.S. government leaders on unidentified aerial phenomena. Loeb says the council plans to publish findings through peer-reviewed science j

The first thing Avi Loeb remembers is how quickly the conversation turned toward a question that has long sat outside mainstream science: what, exactly, is flying in the sky.

Loeb, a Harvard University professor who leads the Galileo Project, says a representative from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence paid him a visit after years of his work focused on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. “They had me at hello,” Loeb said.

Now the White House is backing a new scientific step—one that aims to pull unidentified aerial phenomena. or UAP. into the rhythms of peer review and disciplined analysis. The UAP Science Advisory Council was founded with the explicit goal of advising the highest echelons of the U.S. government on UAP. Its members also hope their findings will be published by prestigious science journals.

Loeb’s account of the council’s origins is part of the story. but so is the setting in which the idea was tested in public. On Thursday last week. Loeb and several other members of the new advisory body were among the speakers at the Disclosure Forum. an all-day event held in the Senate’s office building in Washington. D.C. Several members of Congress attended. The discussion ranged across national security. economic. religious and social implications tied to the possibility of confirming UAP are alien—or even extra-dimensional—in origin.

On paper, the council is meant to be open to what the data might show, but not an echo chamber. Michael Shermer, a prominent UAP skeptic and the founder of Skeptic magazine, is one of the council’s members. Shermer said he will keep the other members grounded and focused on examining UAPs through the lens of established scientific consensus.

“Pretty much everyone on the committee is more open to the possibility that UAPs could represent something other than ordinary terrestrial phenomena,” Shermer said. “Not just space aliens, by the way, but space-time bubbles and multi-dimensional beings and far future human time travelers.”

Then Shermer drew a hard line around what he thinks is plausible.

“None of that is going to pan out, because that’s just so unlikely or impossible by the laws of physics that I wouldn’t even bother doing down that road,” he added.

Loeb, for his part, is pushing for a council that treats public claims with caution and scientific restraint. He said a major goal is making the council’s conclusions accessible to the public. In the immediate future, he said that means publishing any findings on the council’s soon-to-launch website. He also said the group would seek publication of its results in peer-reviewed journals.

“It should become part of scientific deliberation,” Loeb said. “The point is, there is so much unsubstantiated claims in the public domain that are not scientific, that are not worth pursuing. I’m saying that there might be some diamonds in the rough that we will find very useful for science.”

Loeb’s “diamonds” are not just hypothetical. One member of the council, Los Angeles-based psychologist Jennice Vilhauer, has a different task: looking at what happens to people who say they have interacted with UAPs.

Vilhauer said her role is to study how people who claim contact or encounters were affected by the experience. “There’s a tremendous amount of data that goes into what people are reporting. how that gets reported. what happens to them after it gets recorded. so we’re looking at all of that. ” she said.

She said the work includes examining how people are treated and how clinicians interact with those who engage with UAPs. “That’s an enormous problem right now in the military. ” Vilhauer said. adding that only about 5 percent of people are actually reporting what they are seeing because they are afraid of stigma.

That combination—public transparency, peer-reviewed publication, and attention to the human cost of reporting—sits alongside the council’s formal responsibilities, which are tightly tied to government decision-making.

The council’s primary responsibility is to report its findings to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. as well as to a board made up of representatives from the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). the White House. the FBI and other intelligence community agencies. Loeb said the specific members of that board are being kept secret.

“Some of them are government employees that are doing classified work, so they don’t want to be exposed,” he said. “It’s only the council that is open.”

Even within the advisory group, Loeb suggested, some members may not know who sits on the board. Shermer speculated that Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL)—a vocal UAP enthusiast—might be among them, but he said it is also possible others are more focused on the possibility that UAP have human origins.

“If they did pose a security threat, then that would be of interest to the government, and that’s why they’re concerned,” Shermer said. “I think most people in government don’t think it’s aliens.”

The council is also navigating politics and public expectations. Loeb said he believes President Donald Trump is not on the board. Loeb added that he has not met the president and has no imminent plans to do so, while also saying that people report to Trump.

The council’s formation follows Trump’s promise to release government records on UAPs to the public—at least some of which have since been made available on a Pentagon website.

At the same Disclosure Forum, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) praised the Trump administration’s transparency on UAPs. But when asked if Loeb’s advisory council would work with the legislative branch, Rounds demurred. “I honestly don’t know,” he said.

For all the talk of groundbreaking discoveries, the council’s scope is constrained. Loeb said the council will not have access to any classified UAP material. and instead will focus on archival materials. including those contained in the recent Pentagon releases. Timothy Gallaudet, a council member and a U.S. Navy veteran, said that limitation makes the work narrower—and harder.

Given the challenge of reverse-engineering possible alien technology from videos. photos and eye-witness accounts. Gallaudet said the group’s work will be limited. He said the council will try to determine the velocities and rates of movement of UAPs. using available Pentagon footage. in order to better understand what they are.

“Our job is just to research the phenomenon and make recommendations for further scientific study,” Gallaudet said.

Still, he didn’t rule out big scientific gains. Because UAP remain mysterious, Gallaudet said the council might stumble into “fundamental new science principles or results” by studying the phenomena.

“We might be learning some fundamental new science principles or results by studying these phenomena,” he said.

Back in the quieter details of how the council operates, even basic logistics point to how serious this effort is—and how careful it is likely to be. Loeb said the council does not have a budget outside of some reimbursement for travel expenses for members.

The council is open, but the target audience is not. Its work is meant to be public enough to matter to science and public debate. yet official enough to feed intelligence and defense leadership. And for Loeb. that tension is not a flaw in the plan—it is the whole point: to separate the loud claims from what can actually be measured. published. and scrutinized.

UAP Science Advisory Council Avi Loeb Galileo Project Office of the Director of National Intelligence AARO Pentagon UAP releases Michael Shermer Jennice Vilhauer Disclosure Forum Anna Paulina Luna Timothy Gallaudet Mike Rounds FBI scientific journals