Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman is an American businessman and pilot, the founder of Shift4 Payments, commander of the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn private spaceflights, and head of NASA since December 2025. In 2026 he made several statements about UAP: in his view there is unexplained footage, but he does not know of any alien craft or bodies.
Jared Isaacman (1983) is an American businessman and pilot, the founder of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments. He became known for his spaceflights: in 2021 he funded and led the Inspiration4 mission, the first orbital flight whose crew consisted entirely of civilians. In 2024 he flew as commander of Polaris Dawn aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the first spacewalk carried out by private individuals was performed on this mission.
Public role
Donald Trump announced in December 2024 that he was nominating Isaacman to head NASA. The nomination was withdrawn in May 2025, and he was nominated again in November. On December 17, 2025, the Senate confirmed him by a vote of 67 to 30, making him the 15th head of NASA.
Connection to the UFO/UAP topic
As head of NASA, Isaacman has made several statements about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). In May 2026, after the release of the Pentagon's declassified UFO files, he said that they contain genuine unexplained phenomena, not crashed craft or alien bodies, and that he does not know of any such things. He counted NASA's Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 materials among the most interesting, and presented the release as citizen science in which anyone can look through the files. In Summer 2026, on a podcast, he said that NASA has footage of which they do not know what it is. In September he said that the topic should be approached with an open mind, and that if a phenomenon of extraterrestrial origin is involved, NASA should take part in the investigation. He also mentioned a new technology of an adversary as a possibility, but by his own account he leans more toward a natural phenomenon.
Official and skeptical position
In 2022 NASA set up an independent UAP study team, whose September 2023 report stated that nothing indicates an extraterrestrial origin of the phenomena, but that the available data are not sufficient to assess most of the cases. The report recommended better data collection and transparency. Skeptics expect ordinary explanations for most cases, such as atmospheric phenomena, drones or sensor errors. In their view, not knowing what something on a recording is does not mean that it shows an extraordinary phenomenon.