Im a Harvard astrophysicist. Heres why the government asked me to lead a council on UFOs and national security

A month ago, I was visited by a representative from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).He raised a simple question.“Would you be willing to establish and lead a new advisory council for the US Government on the science of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena?” In other words, would I head a council on UFOs.

I responded: “You had me at ‘hello.’”There was no doubt in my mind that I should accept this role.Our goal is to advise the U.S.

government on how to resolve the nature of UAP. The identification of UAP is crucial to the protection of national security.As a US citizen, I feel obligated to help the ODNI and the Pentagon in this mission.

Moreover, if one in a million UAP happens to have a non-human origin, this will constitute the biggest cosmic discovery ever made by humanity.The request from ODNI was unusual for several reasons.First, how often do government employees admit they cannot fulfill their duties and ask scientists for help? Second, implicit in the request was the admission that the US military’s best sensors are currently unable to identify adequately flying objects.

The most plausible explanation for these mysteries is that they are manufactured by adversarial nations.That makes them a security threat.

Why can’t we identify them?We know about the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down in 2023.When you find an ant in the kitchen, you become alarmed because you realize many more ants must be crawling nearby.

For every one spy balloon we know about, there must be many objects that were flagged as UAP orbs.The government is constantly monitoring the entire sky.It struggles to interpret all the signals picked up by its many advanced sensors.

But history tells us that these sensors contain invaluable information.That’s where scientists come in.For example, in the early 1960s the Air Force and the Advanced Research Projects Agency developed the Vela satellite program.

Its purpose was to verify Soviet compliance ...