Like the solar cycle, ufology has gone through many waves over the decades. The current wave arguably began in 2017 when Leslie Kean co-authored a New York Times article on the USS Nimitz incident. The wave swelled with David Grusch, Ryan Graves, Lue Elizondo, and others taking part in the Congressional UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) hearings. The most recent milestone was the release of the documentary Age of Disclosure (2025).
But one thing curiously missing from the current wave is any discussion of alien abductions, implants, mind programming, the contactee phenomenon, or infiltration of societal institutions (including government) by non-human entities or human-alien hybrids. Maybe for a soft disclosure effort, these topics are simply too controversial and lacking in hard evidence compared to raw video and sensor data from military sources. Or perhaps the current wave is a controlled narrative to steer the public away from inconvenient truths and toward sanitized areas of ufology that benefit a certain political or alien agenda. Time will tell what the case may be.
A converging problem is social media siloing people into echo chambers, with algorithms feeding them only what they—and the programmers—want them to see. This insulation of the population from uncomfortable truths or even just differing viewpoints is creating an epidemic of ignorance, division, non-thinking, and intellectual captivity. Anyone trying to spread awareness about the shadier side of the alien presence is now fighting an uphill battle against jadedness, reduced attention spans, and algorithms limiting the virality of counter-narrative material.
The abduction research field probably peaked in the 1990s with John Mack, David Jacobs, Budd Hopkins, Karla Turner, and other icons publishing monumental books and lecturing widely. But today, except for the most hardcore truth-seekers, this newest wave of UFO enthusiasts is generally ignorant of the last wave that peaked in the ’90s. They’re back to a 1950s “nuts-and-bolts” mentality, campaigning for disclosure and arguing over the authenticity of the latest viral footage.
This is the environment that abduction research now finds itself in. The path forward involves mining for more abduction data, refining discernment criteria to help extract signal from noise, leveraging tools like AI and new sensor technologies to track and zoom in more sharply on alien activities, and working more smartly within the new social media environment to better penetrate mass consciousness. Let’s discuss these one by one.
Data Mining
There are priceless archives of letters, videotapes, notebooks, photos, and cassettes in the attics, basements, and closets of veteran UFO researchers. They contain interviews, sketches, audiovisual evidence, and testimonies of witnesses—raw data. If these can be accessed and digitized, the amount of anecdotal data available to ufology would increase a hundredfold. All we normally hear about are the classic cases: Travis Walton, Betty and Barney Hill, Betty Andreasson, Antônio Vilas-Boas, the Pascagoula incident, and so on. But there are hundreds if not thousands more stored away in boxes, some cases undoubtedly even more groundbreaking than the famous ones. So, before such material gets dumped or incinerated, it must be found, safeguarded, and ultimately digitized.
Artificial Intelligence
Once digitized, such data can not only be analyzed by thinking minds but also by thinking machines—i.e., artificial intelligence. Large language models like ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Gemini, etc., keep getting better over time. The ability for AI to interpret audio, scanned images of handwritten notes, analyze photos, and connect the subtlest patterns in a dataset is improving exponentially. By 2027, artificial intelligence will be able to digest boxes of mixed media and analyze it all holistically with perspicacity and exactitude exceeding that of a Jacques Vallée or John Keel. This is a golden opportunity for abduction research to leverage such technologies, revisit the past, revitalize dusty archives, and uncover heretofore unknown data patterns. More than at any time in history, we can soon put alien activity under a microscope and figure out its nature, motivations, capabilities, limitations, and agendas with objective precision.
Sensor Recordings
Sensor and surveillance technologies are also improving by the year: ever more sensitive magnetic field sensors, accelerometers, RF spectrum analyzers, video with object and motion detection, and thermal infrared imaging. Combination-sensor devices like MADAR or MUPAS are being used by abductees to monitor alien abduction activities. Wearable devices, motion trackers, wireless cameras with battery backup, etc., are further empowering abductees.
Such technology can only improve with time. AI can be used for increasingly better anomaly detection, pattern recognition, and collation of sensor data into a meaningful assessment. In short, abduction researchers may soon face a torrent of new data from the past, present, and future combined. And aliens will find it harder to remain covert. Maybe the coming technological singularity will force aliens to disclose their existence sooner rather than later, to get ahead of an inevitable unplanned catastrophic disclosure.
Pattern Recognition
Based on the influx of new data and its AI-assisted analysis, new and more insightful patterns should emerge about the UFO, alien, and abduction phenomenon. This includes better criteria for discerning between real abductions and false ones (hallucinations, fabrication, staged government abductions) and between the various types of NHI beings and their motivations. Penetrating through the noise and smoke put up by aliens, government, fabricators, and occult entities is paramount to abduction research because filtering the data must be done before accurate conclusions can be drawn from it. If we accept false or poisoned data due to a lack of sufficiently robust discernment criteria, then we make bad conclusions. And since the alien presence is potentially an existential threat to humanity as much as a gift, lack of discernment is completely fatal in the long run.
The Mission
Abduction research now has the duty and opportunity to:
1) increase at an accelerating rate its understanding and discernment of the alien presence,
2) thereby suss out which alien agendas are pro-humanity or anti-humanity,
3) detect the enactment of these agendas within the human social, cultural, political, geopolitical, and religious spheres,
4) help abductees beat their abductors and regain their peace and sovereignty, and
5) gather harder evidence and insights to counter the controlled narratives that have hijacked the latest ufology wave.
This moves the field toward adopting an outcome-based strategy aimed at safeguarding human sovereignty rather than mere academic discourse.
Education
Sharing such information effectively requires bypassing or piercing the siloing algorithms of social media. This can be done “old school” with books, lectures, interviews, and podcasts, sure. But the power of AI video generation can also be leveraged to create infotainment that spreads easily through social media feeds. For instance, what if those thousands of cases currently sitting in archives could be turned into compelling videos or documentaries? In the past, this would take immense time, money, and skill. But in the years ahead, it may be easier than writing an article.
Conclusion
Consider that although ufology’s waves seem to be going nowhere or even regressing, alien agendas may be moving irreversibly forward. It is tempting to view the “Phenomenon” as some mysterious force of nature that’s always been there and always will be there, perennially unchanging other than putting on new masks to fit new cultural assumptions. But this view is deadly if the “Phenomenon” is actually a set of agendas with distinct phases and planned end goals that are now moving toward completion.
It may be that—after having staged hybrids in our society in all the key positions, after having mind-programmed enough abductees with split alters that can be activated with a single telepathic command, after having placed all the geopolitical dominoes in the right order for the final knockdown—abduction researchers may wake up one day when the world has changed forever and it’s too late to do anything about it. Outmaneuvered by alien strategists while ufology spun its wheels for decades, forever chasing entertainment and “proof of existence.”
That’s why the future of abduction research must include leveraging the new tools coming online and accelerating toward its own singularity of having solved the mystery of the alien presence and what can effectively be done about it.
- Thomas Minderle