2026-04-25 - Space Symposium Hosts First-Ever UFO Panel - David Grusch, Rep Burlison, Rod Roddenberry & Mike Gold

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Transcript:

Jeremy Corbell (31:27):

So this is my good friend, a guy that I really admire. I'm David Grush. David, do you have a few minutes? Kind of give us a little breakdown of why you're talking with us here today, then we'll ask you some questions.

David Grusch (31:37):

Sure. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity to be here, Jeremy, and Mike Gold as well. Ironically, before the topic of my great public infamy, I actually spent 15 years in the space intelligence community, some people in the audience I may have worked with in the past or whatnot in certain assignments, but I spent 15 years in the Intel community before becoming a professional staff member. For Congress, that being said, my opinions are on my own, not of Congress, but I started in the Air Force NRO and NGA as a senior intelligence officer. And ironically, I was also the former intelligence integration division chief for the Space Security and Defense Program here in Colorado Springs as well about a decade ago. And I spent many, many years providing counterintelligence and program protection support on the X37B oral test vehicle. So I have a great experience in test, worked on a lot of space programs, worked on a lot of offensive cyber programs and classified ISR programs.

(32:47):

But of most significance to the topic we're going to discuss today, in my last assignment during the IC, I dealt with transmedium threats and unknown anomalous activity in our skies and our space domain and under sea. So I believe we're entering in an era in which most consequential threats may not present themselves in familiar ways. Some will present unique signatures, some will maneuver in non-standard ways, some will exploit transitions across our airspace and upper atmospheric environments that our legacy kind of sensor and analytical constructs still treat us as separate problems. And I know that's something that the Golden Dome Program, which is the president's priority is trying to tackle. But because of some of these advanced UAS and anomalous detections has changed our threat picture and certainly the intelligence community is aware of this. And there were legacy programs tackling this and I'll call it rice bowls or stove pipes and a lot of that data was not shared with me and my team at NGA and ironically, not even with the Arrow office that's currently been instantiated at the Pentagon to try to tackle this issue from a over perspective.

(34:10):

So all I wanted to really talk about, and we can obviously have a discussion after I mention this, but it's just whether those sources, peer adversary breakthrough, some sort of unacknowledged platform or a genuinely unresolved signature sets, the strategic requirements still going to be the same. And that's persistent sensing rapid attribution, resilient networks and decision quality data, machine speed are really going to be needed to affect this problem set in the future. So we reduce strategic surprise and help build our space enabled defense architecture worthy of the threat environment and likely the scientific discovery ahead now that the president has promised back in February to release all we know on some of these anomalous signature sets and things that we've recovered and exploited over the last couple of decades.

Jeremy Corbell (35:04):

Yeah. I love it. When you're talking about this, it's very matter of fact, you did come forward, you blew the whistle, you really broke from the mold. What was your motivation to do that? Why did you feel that this was such an important topic that the average person needed to tune into? Is there a reason that we need to know this now and that you're fighting so hard right now with Congress to get this information out to the public?

David Grusch (35:30):

Yeah. Having spent 15 years in the IC at the highest levels, handled the presidential daily brief, I was cleared to most DOD special access programs. I saw a sharing issue amongst that ecosystem, but also a nine eleven-like intelligence sharing problem where there were certain centers of excellence that were sequestering this information and the government was starting to spend capital on this problem set overtly, but it turned out the government had decades and decades of information and recovered FMA/FME material, and I thought that was a huge issue. And once again, it wasn't being reported to Congress. So back in 2022, I went to the ICIG with people that worked on those programs to blow the whistle and I subsequently briefed the Senate and House intelligence committees in a classified environment and a compartment environment on those details.

Jeremy Corbell (36:27):

And so if this is such matter of fact, and you've really fought and put your own person on the line here, what I want to understand from you is basically like it is important now that this comes forward, but what is your hope? What is your hope? Is it integration of this knowledge into everyday society? What is your hope right now? And are you optimistic from everything that you've done over the last few years?

David Grusch (36:55):

Yeah, I think there should be a public acknowledgement strategy. Some of that needs to come from the White House in terms of how much that we acknowledge and reveal to the public, but I would like to see greater integration with this problem set in our architectures. A lot of it was, we'll call hidden in an onion fashion. In a lot of the space architectures, a lot of the people in the audience are familiar with, both classified and over white side space world, but we need to be better stewards with the taxpayer money and actually overtly integrate this, add this to the national intelligence priority framework list and to actually task our analytical centers overtly, whether it be NASIC, DI, MISIC, et cetera, on this. So we built an informed larger cadre of people tackling this issue because it is very interesting and there's some stigma behind it, but I would like to see the greater integration so we're just better stewards of the taxpayer money.

Mike Gold (37:57):

Hey, David, it's Mike Gold. And first and foremost, I just want to say from a former government official to another, thank you. Thank you for being such a champion for transparency, for accountability, and for being willing to be a martyr on this, for taking all the slings and arrows.

(38:15):

That you have gotten, which I know are absolutely non-trivial. So first and foremost, thank you. We're here at the National Space Symposium, and we have a lot of people in uniform around, lot of conversations about national security. I'd love to hear your thoughts about how the coverup, how the lack of transparency, how the lack of information represents a national security threat to the US, and how you think this issue impacts national security, both how it can be negative and how we could improve national security if we were more transparent and if we were able to get top people working on these issues.

David Grusch (39:00):

Yeah. I mean, the simple impact, this is a security stove piping, and that should be of no surprise with a lot of people in the audience that have been in the special access program or controlled access program environments. I had a lot of very senior friends of mine saying, "Hey, Dave, why am I not briefed? If this exists, I should know. " And that's a big problem in positions I've had at the NRO Operations Center, Space Security and Defense Program, working for the joint chiefs, working at NGA as kind of the UAP transmedium issue lead, I had the need to know to be fully cleared into those programs and politics and personalities and riceful kind of mentality blocked our access as a team for the most part. And I think that really hurts us, like I was saying earlier, where we should be leveraging national overhead enterprise and other parts of our national intelligence enterprise on this topic, but we use it in secret on the down low, the night job of a certain analyst at NASIC who also works for the legacy program that's also analyzing this stuff without telling his boss.

(40:12):

That's essentially how the program has dealt with this over the time. And I just think that that's a real travesty. And I think being able to overtly integrate it into architecture also prevents false flag issues. So there was actually a famous 1971 treaty between the USSR and the US. You can look it up. It's unclassified. It was signed in September 1971. And you'll see Article three, they were worried about the UAP problem set triggering nuclear escalation because of the misidentification of anomalous activity near NC3 assets. And so I think that'll deescalate possible geopolitical issues if we overtly bring out the topic as well. That's kind of a more prosaic, unexpected second order consequence of more transparency.

Mike Gold (41:02):

Yeah. David, if you're a weaponized, regular listener, which I am, you'll always see optimism from my friend here, Jeremy and pessimism from George Knapp. To me, we've made amazing progress in a relative short of time. Again, because of people like you and your courage, David, just the fact that there were congressional hearings, I think was extraordinary and helps push back against the stigma. So here we are now. We've got a statement from the President of the United States. We have the Secretary of State talking about this issue publicly in age of disclosure. We've got the DNI talking about it in her confirmation hearing. 49 files have been identified in part due to your wonderful work. What do you think happens next, David? What are your hopes, particularly for the near term in this year, next year, what do you think that will happen that could move us forward?

(41:55):

What do you think needs to happen?

David Grusch (41:58):

Yeah, certainly. Secretary Rubio was a recipient of all the classified information I handed over when I was in the intelligence community through the ICIG. Secretary Rubio is very well informed. I would recommend the White House interface with the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, Mr. Devin Nunez as the chair, and actually concoct the plan with the cabinet based on the breakdown of different mission areas that each cabinet member will have to deal with in this issue to include public health concerns and HHS, to include national security defense concerns with Tulsi Gabbard and Peak Hegseth. And I think we'll get a basic affirmation to meet the president's intent based on his tweet back in February. Will it be everything the public once? I don't know. I'll certainly be an advocate for that. And I know Congress strongly wants the executive branch to come clean with everything it knows.

(42:55):

And I know that the members I support to include Congressman Eric Burleson who'll be speaking here earlier or later, excuse me, will be pushing for that. So I think there'll be the legislative branch kind of counterbalancing whatever the executive does to kind of ensure we achieve the transparency that the American public wants. I certainly have advised the administration over the last year or so and has spent a lot of time with high level officials working for the president to try to provide my sage advice on it. And I'll leave that at that just to keep confidences in some of my sensitive conversations. But I hope for the best that I think there's a high expectation for the president to deliver. And I think if he does reveal everything that I came in contact with, he's going to go down in history as a great figure historically, regardless of your political persuasion and personal opinion of the president.

Jeremy Corbell (43:50):

So yeah, I guess kind of final question, our audience is not just going to be people here. It's going to be millions of people outside of here when we release this episode. Just in plain English for those people, what do you want people to understand from your experience about UAP, about the presence, the UAP presence here on planet Earth? I mean, straight up, what do you want people to know, David Grush?

David Grusch (44:11):

There's truly anomalous signatures in the skies. The US government understands and represents a form of sentient non-human intelligence. I know that sounds very Star Trek. You know, Gene Rodenberry and Rod's dad's sci-fi series, but it is true. And I want the American public to be comforted that the universe is teaming with life, it seems, and readily able to be explored. And the US government does have a lot of information that I think will inspire Gen Alpha and Gen Z and the American populace at large. And it will be a new era. It'll be a little uncomfortable. There'll be some truths that are be a hard pill to swallow, but I think it's ultimately a good thing to get this out there. And I think the people of the world and the American public will be very happy to understand their place in the universe, so to speak, without sounding too much like Carl Sagan.