Rounds, Mike (R-SD)

Term: 2015-Present

Senate Armed Services Committee (2015-Present)

07-14-2023	Rounds: “Our goal is to assure credibility with regard to any investigation or record keeping of materials associated with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” “Relevant documents related to this issue should be preserved. Providing a central collection location and reputable review board to maintain the records adds to the credibility of any future investigations.”
07-20-2023	Matt Laslo: "I'm just curious, who wrote that bill? Because people were curious about the language that was used." Mike Rounds: "It was a joint effort. Why did it look kind of like somebody had tried to create a cow and came up with a horse or something?" ML: "I'm trying to look it up, the term they used, but it was used like 22 times and-" MR: "There was direct participation between the organizations that currently have to cooperate in this, but we tried to bring a number of different entities in for a discussion so that it wasn't a surprise to anybody." ML: "I think it might be the term non-human intelligence, I think that might be used 22 times." ML: "Well, pretty simple terms, aren't they?" ML: "But could that be AI?" MR: "Could be." ML: "Non-human?" MR: "It could be." ML: "Really?" MR: "Yeah." ML: "So it's that broad." MR: "Well, could be. It was not by accident, let's put it that way."
07-23-2023	Rounds said he has seen “no evidence personally” that extraterrestrial craft are visiting the planet but said, “I know that there’s a lot of people that have questions about it.” “It’s just like with JFK and the [1963] assassination. We set up separate archive for that or central collection place for all that data, which I think gave the American people a sense of security that there was a location where it was being held. This is following that same approach,” Asked about whether he personally believes military personnel and sensors are encountering extraterrestrial visitors, Rounds said: “I don’t think you can discount the possibility just simply because of the size of the universe.” “I don’t think anybody should say that they know for certain either way,” he said. “If we simply refuse to acknowledge there’s even a remote possibility, then we’re probably not being honest.” “Some of the items we simply can’t explain,” he said of the Naval videos of UAPs.
Last week of July 2023	Rounds: “I had one classified briefing with Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.”
12-13-2023	Sen. Rounds engages in a colloquy with Sen. Schumer about the passage of the 2024 NDAA and the House stripping provisions from the UAP Disclosure Act.
	Matt Laslo: Who do you make the changes to your UAP amendment?" Mike Rounds: "It's not what we wanted, but it's a step in the right direction and it brings attention to the need for additional transparency. I would really like to have the commission and if we can negotiate on the commission, that's fine in terms of who is on it, but I think an independent commission is still the best way to go." ML: "Do you know who pulled the levers? Was it Chair Turner?" MR: "I don't. I had talked to them and I know there's some concerns, but I don't know if the concerns were such that it would stop it. So I honestly don't know where the actual stop was at within the process." ML: "Going forward, how do you plan-- or you could watch implementation, keep your eyes on AARO and then potentially tweak it next year's NDAA?" MR: "Here's the deal, and AARO is a part of DOD. Well, this goes beyond DOD. This requires attention or cooperation by other agencies as well. And that's the reason why we want it separated out, is we want it to be all encompassing." ... But that's the reason why we want it to be all encompassing. And AARO is working, but AARO is just for DOD and while they're collecting items, they're not really disseminating items. And so we would like to have some transparency, but we also want to make darn sure that we protect our national security interests as well."