Missing Scientists, UFO Claims and Political Panic: How an Online Conspiracy Reached the White House

“When facts are scarce, conspiracy fills the silence faster than evidence ever can.”

A conspiracy theory linking the disappearances and deaths of at least 11 U.S. scientists to UFOs, foreign espionage and hidden national security secrets has moved from obscure online forums to congressional inquiries and questions for President Donald Trump, highlighting how digital misinformation can rapidly shape mainstream political debate.

The theory alleges that researchers connected to space exploration, nuclear facilities and advanced defense technologies have either vanished or died under suspicious circumstances, suggesting a coordinated plot involving foreign adversaries such as China, covert government programs, or even extraterrestrial activity.

While law enforcement agencies continue to investigate individual cases, experts say there is no verified evidence connecting the incidents and warn that the narrative reflects a broader pattern in which unrelated tragedies are stitched together into compelling but unsupported conspiracies.

At the center of the latest wave of speculation is the disappearance of retired U.S. Air Force Major General William “Neil” McCasland, 68, who vanished on Feb. 27 from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

McCasland, a former commander of the Kirtland Air Force Base’s Phillips Research Site and Laboratory, had previously overseen programs involving space vehicles and directed-energy technologies. According to authorities, he left his home between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., leaving behind his phone and glasses but taking a .38 revolver.

He is believed to have left on foot.His wife reported him missing shortly after midday, prompting the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office to issue a Silver Alert, typically used when an older adult disappears under concerning circumstances.

No confirmed trace of McCasland has been found since.His background in military research quickly drew attention from UFO-focused online communities, where speculation spread that his disappearance was linked to classified aerospace programs or knowledge of unidentified anomalous phenomena, often referred to as UAPs.Lt. Kyle Woods of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said investigators were examining all available leads but had found no evidence supporting UFO-related claims.

“I appreciate that there’s a community that wants to go down the rabbit hole of UFOs,” Woods told reporters. “We can only go off the facts.”The lack of immediate answers created fertile ground for broader theories. Online accounts soon began compiling a list of other scientists who had disappeared or died in recent years, suggesting they were all connected by sensitive government work.

Among them was Michael David Hicks, a former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist who studied near-Earth asteroids and comets. Hicks died in 2023 at age 59 from causes that were not publicly detailed.Monica Reza, who served as director of NASA’s materials processing group, disappeared in June 2025 while hiking in Angeles National Forest in California. According to police reports, Reza, 60, was walking about 30 feet behind a companion when she vanished. Her body has not been recovered.

Other names added to the list include astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, who was shot and killed at his home; MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro, killed by a former classmate; and Jason Thomas, a chemical biologist at Novartis who disappeared in December before his remains were found in Massachusetts in March.Amy Eskridge, an Alabama-based researcher who claimed to be working on “gravity-modification research,” was also drawn into the theory.

Eskridge died by suicide in 2022, but renewed attention followed comments by Franc Milburn, who identifies himself as a former British intelligence officer. Milburn said Eskridge had once told him not to believe reports of suicide if she were found dead.

These separate incidents, many with known explanations or unrelated circumstances, were amplified through social media, podcasts and right-wing media outlets, where they were presented as possible evidence of a larger hidden operation.President Trump was asked publicly about the reports and said he would look into them, giving the theory further visibility.

Republican lawmakers James Comer of Kentucky and Eric Burlison of Missouri escalated the issue last week by sending letters to the FBI, NASA, the Department of Energy and other federal agencies demanding an investigation into what they described as a possible “sinister connection.”

“If the reports are accurate, these deaths and disappearances may represent a grave threat to U.S. national security,” they wrote, citing concerns that scientists linked to nuclear and aerospace work could be targets.They also suggested McCasland and Reza may have had a “close professional connection,” though no evidence of coordinated targeting has been publicly established.

The issue intensified further after the recent death of UFO researcher David Wilcock, who died by suicide outside his home in Boulder County, Colorado. Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee responded publicly by questioning whether so many incidents could simply be coincidence.

But researchers who study conspiracy culture say coincidence is often exactly what people resist accepting.Greg Eghigian, professor of history and bioethics at Pennsylvania State University and author of “After the Flying Saucers Came,” said the current theory reflects longstanding patterns in American UFO culture, where military secrecy, nuclear sites and unexplained deaths easily combine into larger narratives.

“It folds neatly into decades-old notions that UFOs are spotted around nuclear facilities and that some of these places may be masking UFO-related projects,” Eghigian said.He said the post-COVID information environment has intensified distrust of scientific institutions and made audiences more receptive to narratives involving hidden knowledge and secret state operations.

“When people want to connect these dots, it falls readily into a sweet spot for UFO lore,” he said. “The military, state secrets, nuclear technology, missing people — the seeds of this were planted decades ago.”Podcaster Joe Rogan, whose audience reaches millions, recently suggested the disappearances might be linked to “plasma technology,” adding to the mainstream visibility of the speculation.

Yet perhaps the clearest rebuttal has come from McCasland’s wife, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, who has publicly pushed back against theories suggesting her husband was abducted for classified knowledge.She said her husband had retired nearly 13 years earlier and no longer had access to sensitive information.

“It seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him,” she wrote.Addressing his past association with Tom DeLonge, the former Blink-182 musician who has become involved in UAP disclosure discussions, she said that connection was “not a reason for someone to abduct” him.She also dismissed claims that he had secret knowledge about extraterrestrial evidence linked to the Roswell incident.

Using humor to challenge the speculation, she wrote that perhaps “aliens beamed him up to the mothership,” before adding that no mothership had been reported hovering over the Sandia Mountains.

For investigators, McCasland remains a missing person case, not proof of extraterrestrial intervention. But for a digital ecosystem built on suspicion, mystery itself often becomes enough.