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FBI looks into dead or missing scientists tied to NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX
- giannicmptr1000 6mo agoDoesn't seem connected, but makes a nice film. I think ignorance is bliss and due to the current climate, many people checking out...
- golem14 6mo ago[flagged]
- F7F7F7 6mo agoTurns out scientists die too?
- ozten 6mo ago> the concentration of deaths and disappearances within such a small, specialized field as defying ordinary probability. The best conspiracy theory I've seen online is that top-secret energy/weapons plans were sold by a traitor, and these scientists were kidnapped to be the worker bees. Terribly dark and implausible, but also, we are living through a storyline that writers wouldn't even consider a draft because it's too on-the-nose.
- deathlight 6mo agoNow that's a fun one, where did you hear that from? Other ones I've seen include; tit for tat revenge for the assassination of Iranian nuke scientists; a global conspiracy of illuminati/masons/"jews" (defined so broadly as to be useless); chinese interdiction (kidnapping, a-la the reverse of the subplot in nolan's the dark knight film - that is essentially what you said); bankers who own everything and subvert everything to their interests (which remains stickily plausible to me); of course we can't forget our favorite: ancient aliens been doing all of this from the beginning. Anything to absolve people of confronting their own DNA and the predator/prey dichotomy that rules most life forms.
- DANmode 6mo agoStruggling to tell if you’re trolling, or just often on a good one at this hour, based on your other comments. Anyway, did you fix the hiccups?
- deathlight 6mo agoTheres a lot of awesome fixes to hiccups that actually work if you do them right. One thing I've learned over the years is that most problems have an obvious fix that some people figured out ages ago and the reason you're late to the party of knowing is that after everyone else figured it out they decided not to tell you because then they could make a buck off of selling you the solution. Applies to so many things in our world.
- DANmode 6mo agoSo…did you fix them?! Still meandering without contribution, a bit.
- anthk 6mo agoIsrael just lobbies with money, it's far more effective.
- lyu07282 6mo agoThey assassinate truckloads of people all the time too though, Mossad operations in the west are usually not even investigated or reported by western media, they just quietly release agents back to Israel if they ever accidentally caught them. Some info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_espionage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_espionage_in_the_Unite...
- anthk 6mo agoGiven the '72 events at the Olympics, that's reasonable. Altough their colonialism, para-Nazism (Zionism) with tons of school brainwashing and the IDF war crimes are on par on the Islamic fundamentalism sickos with madrassas and the like. Different shades from the same turd. Edit:, in '72, Munich attacks. While everyone in the Mediterranean was trading, sharing and mating each other (especially under the Roman empire) boosting commerce, sales and culture -relatively speaking to what you could find in a tribe-, these backwards shepherds (both sides) want to bring the world back to the Bronze Age. Gnostics at least got it better, as Arrians.
- bawolff 6mo agoI imagine it is difficult to get good work out of scientists at the point of a gun. With physical labour you can tell if someone is doing a good job, but with intellectual labour its much harder to tell if someone is intentionally being slow or if its a hard problem that is difficult to solve.
- Cytobit 6mo ago> defying ordinary probability Improbable events do not defy probability.
- poulpy123 6mo agoSpecialized fields such as property custodians, administrative employees and managers
- imglorp 6mo agoHow many of the disappearances were defections?
- xorgun 6mo ago[dead]
- himata4113 6mo agoThis appears to be for investigating how many scientist have left the US sponsored by state powers. But this also seems like bad communication on the FBI and perhaps poor publishing. I think there is some confusion that there are more people going missing and dying in the sector while not outlining that there are more people going missing AND dying. Or I'm just completely wrong, the only reason why I am making such assumptions because there is more information about this in the ASML case where a whisleblower leaked that china has poached ASML engineers and have given them new identities to work in chip manufacturing sector in china.
- Cytobit 6mo agoIt's hard to believe that this administration would suddenly care about brain drain, after decimating all academic grants and generally exhibiting anti-intellectual behavior.
- swed420 6mo agoTrue. It seems more likely they're using this to drum up fear of tHe eNEmY to manufacture consent for more conflict.
- Lord-Jobo 6mo agoThe decline in quality of both investigations and information/studies by the FBI over the past year and a half has been extremely noticeable. This is just not a serious organization anymore, and the lack of such a thing at the federal level leaves us insanely vulnerable to our own criminal operations. The same thing happened with the IRS even earlier, multiple rounds of intensive they just cannot pursue criminals of a certain type, and the criminals know it. So they can run basically unchecked, looting all of us for billions.
- wmf 6mo agoI don't have the link but someone estimated the number of scientists working in the defense field (it's a lot) and the number of deaths per year you'd expect (over 100). There's probably nothing here. It probably doesn't hurt to have the FBI take a second look at any death of somebody who has a security clearance or is working on export-controlled tech, but OTOH that might be a lot of work.
- xbar 6mo agoDeaths and mysterious deaths are not at all the same. Mysterious deaths and vanishings become increasingly rare the higher up the socio-economic curve you climb. It is not surprising that the FBI did not detect an actual pattern before now, considering the various ways that the entirety of it spent the entirety of 2025.
- platinumrad 6mo agoDying while experiencing nature is "mysterious" but also not uncommon among upper-middle class people. I would bet that the average victim of a backpacking or cross-country skiing mishap is wealthier than average.
- tarsinge 6mo agoBut that's not how "mysterious" is used here. These scientists did not meet their end during an obvious outdoor activity.
- platinumrad 6mo agoOne of them disappeared while hiking with friends. Another two were last seen walking away from home.
- ineedasername 6mo agoRoughly half the people you'd see walking are "walking away from home". It's not a known risk factor. In fact unless they live near "nature" then being seen walking anywhere at all near their home is pretty reasonable evidence that their disappearance, whatever the cause, is less likely to be "Got lost hiking" or similar.
- neurocline 6mo agoOnce I saw “James Comer” I knew I could ignore this.
- OhioMan2943 6mo agoJames Coomey
- defrost 6mo agoFrom article: Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), the chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs, sent letters to FBI Director Kash Patel, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, requesting staff-level briefings no later than April 27. James Richardson Comer Jr. (R-Ky.) Not to be confused with James Comey. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comer ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey
- OhioMan2943 6mo agoI read his autobiography. Surely that entitles me to one irrelevant crude sex joke.
- themafia 6mo agoThis is one of those "That's weird. Why are you telling me?" stories.
- mmooss 6mo agoThe article doesn't seem to reveal the source of its information about these alleged disappearances. Is it the letters from the members of Congress? Also, what interest would a foreign power have in planetary defense against asteroids? Is there some dual-use technology in that?
- ytpete 6mo agoIntercepting a meteor falling to Earth may be not too unlike intercepting a ballistic missile in its terminal descent from high altitude.
- snowwrestler 6mo ago“Planetary defense” is a fig leaf covering the development of technologies to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles above the atmosphere. The belief is that the first country to have this reliably at scale breaks the “mutually assured destruction” paradigm that has governed nuclear weapons policy for decades. If the U.S. can send nuclear ballistic missiles, but can’t be hit by nuclear missiles, what stops them from just nuking anyone who disagrees with them?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 6mo agoSomething about ufo conspiracy theories.
- xer0x 6mo agoOdd, I saw this bubble up on social media this week as a tinfoil hat curiosity. I don't know what's real anymore.
- contingencies 6mo agoThere's good news and bad news. Unfortunately they're the same news. Given the rapid dissolution of any sort of publicly verifiable 'news' outlet, and the abject commercialization of media, plus the doublespeak of politicians and businesses, the PR industry, self-censorship in response to cancel-culture and other divisive popular behavioral trends, and the replication crisis in science - it's not just you. It's everyone.
- cucumber3732842 6mo ago>Given the rapid dissolution of any sort of publicly verifiable 'news' outlet When was the news ever publicly verifiable? If Walter Kronkiue said that the North Vietnamese shot at our naval vessels twice on two different days you had no way of even accessing alternative viewpoints and that the 2nd day was questionable, you just had to trust him. Today with all the contrarians and competing alternate sources it's arguably better because if there's some smoking gun that something is BS it almost certainly will get talked about. It might be bullshit on both sides but at least it's there to look at if you want.
- krapp 6mo agoAnd how would you be able to publicly verify the competing alternate sources and the smoking gun? It's no different than the situation with old media, except there's more noise and disinformation, and everything is easier to fake. Unless you personally are physically there with whatever necessary field expertise exists to run experiments or interrogate witnesses, you wind up having to trust somebody either way. I mean the fact that the effect of all of this "alternative" media has been the complete dissolution of any kind of objective reality in favor of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, rather than holding power to account, should demonstrate that it isn't better.
- nickandbro 6mo agoA lot of people are saying it’s disconnected, but even if it was, if a string of your country’s top rocket experts started disappearing, you wouldn’t just sit idly by
- blks 6mo agoIt’s a list of scientists, admin workers, janitors, assistants, and one person is a pseudoscientific grifter.
- poulpy123 6mo agoAnd retirees
- laughing_man 6mo agoTrue. Whether or not it's coincidental they have to look into it.
- King-Aaron 6mo agoUnfortunately the people 'looking into it' have currently demonstrated that they are incapable of looking into anything in good faith.
- laughing_man 6mo agoYou think the FBI won't investigate in good faith?
- actionfromafar 6mo agoRemember, sarcasm on the internet is difficult. Do you think Kash "forgot his safety blanket" Patel will direct FBI in good faith?
- laughing_man 6mo ago
- coppsilgold 6mo agoOne more addition to the conspiracy theories: The frequency of fireballs in our planet’s skies seemed to grow in recent months. NASA and other meteor experts can’t agree on what explains it. ... In response to growing public interest, a NASA public affairs official said in a blog post at the end of March, “While it may seem like meteor reports and sightings have been more frequent recently, it is not out of the ordinary.” The post explained that from February to April, there is often a 10 to 30 percent increase in the number of extremely luminous meteors — and nobody is quite sure why. Mr. Hankey said that this 10 to 30 percent increase was already baked into the American Meteor Society tally, and that it doesn’t explain the apparent doubling of fireball sightings in the year’s first quarter. <https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/science/march-fireballs-meteors-astronomy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/science/march-fireballs-m...>
- zavec 6mo agoHomestuck is finally happening?
- onion2k 6mo agoThe scientists are being killed by space fireballs!? This is conspiracy bigger than I thought!
- lesostep 6mo agoCan you, please, also quote how this sightings are tallied? Is that an astronomical observation by same people or is that based on self-reporting citizens? "People see more stuff in the sky" is a common sign for people getting more anxious about attacks from the sky. To my knowledge, first UFO reporting waves happened during cold war when people started to get paranoid about soviet spying.
- nephihaha 6mo agoThe first true UFO wave was the phantom airship wave of the 1890s. But there were similar bouts before then.
- JetSpiegel 6mo ago
- etaweb 6mo agoIt reminds me of The Three-Body Problem novel/series. At the beginning, the police is investigating on multiple suicides by scientists.
- bawolff 6mo agoI think its a fairly common plot. Its also the plot of So many steps to death by Agatha Christie.
- nephihaha 6mo agoIt reminds me of the plot of Alternative 3 where the scientists aren't disappearing, they're moving to Mars.
- pavel_lishin 6mo agoThat part was genuinely the least plausible part of those books to me.
- anthk 6mo agoAlso, some plasma/antigravity researches like the Chinese-origin one in America, among others.
- red_admiral 6mo agoI'm sure there's something behind deaths and disappearences of key rocket, defense, and nuclear scientists in Iran. Has been going on for a while. For the US, my money is on "more evidence is needed". I could imagine the more "diverse" among the scientists deciding it's time for a career/employer change over the past year or so, though.
- Frieren 6mo ago> Later on Monday, Comer said the string of deaths was unlikely to be a coincidence. Release the rest of the Epstein files. This seems the kind of conspiracy that could be found there.
- kelnos 6mo agoOf those who are missing and not dead, I wonder if they are largely not US citizens, or citizens who have strong/stronger ties outside the US. It would not surprise me if people like that have decided to take their talents elsewhere, given the current state of anti-intellectualism in the US.
- poulpy123 6mo agoI don't think that the one who left by foot with a gun without money or phone planed to go abroad
- bawolff 6mo ago11 people over 4 years doesn't seem like that much. Its not clear to me how big a population that is out of but if its government scientists i assume there are tens of thousands of those if not hundreds of thousands. Still, FBI should be investigating every suspicious death of people with high level clearence.
- redleader55 6mo agoStatistically, I would look at deaths from that age group among space flight science and compare this "blip" to the p50. I don't think it's easy to say if 11 deaths/disappearances over 4 years is high or not, without looking at the problem this way.
- jagermo 6mo agoIs there a polymarket bet that they have been abducted into some billionaire's lair? There is a lot of Bond-type villain vibe going around there.
- heikkilevanto 6mo agoWhy would FBI ever announce that they are investigating something? Is it that time of the year where they have to convince budget makers about their importance? Or are they trying to direct attention from something else? Epstein?
- Jamesbeam 6mo agoIt is good that there is a proper investigation, and I think it’s likely just a statistical anomaly. My personal opinion is that scientists should be off-limits for any military as long as they are not directly involved in operational planning and execution in an active state of war. That said, targeting and capturing scientists is a military policy with a long history. https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/alsos-mission/ https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/alsos-mission/ The United States and Israel have allegedly carried out the most attacks on (nuclear) scientists after WW II. There is a rather extensive scientific discussion about the legality and morality of this kind of targeting. https://www.legitimacyasatarget.com/books/drones/ https://www.legitimacyasatarget.com/books/drones/ The overall conclusion in the broader scientific context, though, is that this approach is not effective. https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501760341/all-options-on-the-table/ https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501760341/all-... Removing individual expertise may delay strategic asset acquisition, but targeting alone is unlikely to destroy a programme outright and could even increase a country’s desire to strengthen research and acquire even more expertise. You can see good examples of this with how the Israelis fail horribly over and over, preventing Iran from acquiring weapons-grade nuclear material. They failed so hard that the President is telling the public that Iran was within weeks to have a functional nuclear weapon and has set the world economy on fire over this with millions all over the planet suffering right now as a direct consequence of that decision. Just a few days ago, a Ukrainian electronics expert for drone tech was hit in his home with five Shahed drones by Russia. https://united24media.com/latest-news/russian-shahed-drone-hits-home-of-ukrainian-defense-ministry-advisor-flash-injuring-him-18056 https://united24media.com/latest-news/russian-shahed-drone-h... The result of his survival will likely be that more Ukrainians want to learn what he does and result in an even stronger drone electronics programme to gain a further advantage over Russia even quicker, especially in the midrange strike capabilities of the Ukrainians. If he had died, the same effect would have likely occurred. So touching this scientist / engineer was a huge long-term strategic error by the Russians. Just like when the Ukrainians car-bombed Alexander Dugin’s daughter https://www.kyivpost.com/post/23139 https://www.kyivpost.com/post/23139, which resulted long-term strategically in a Ukrainian brain drain by bullets behind ears. https://acleddata.com/report/personal-payback-assassinations-escalate-ukraine-and-russias-shadow-war https://acleddata.com/report/personal-payback-assassinations... Regardless of my or your opinion on this, this practice will likely persist as part of the foreign policy toolkit for states aiming to prevent proliferation. And if you allow the US and Israel, or Russia or the United Kingdom, who all did kill scientists, to follow this policy unpunished, you need also to respect that their adversaries have the same right to do so. Which means US scientists will end up as targets. Reality is, it has never been easier to kill a person with drones without risking capture or even consequences for the assassin, so the US might get some of its own medicine, and the only one who can stop that is the average citizen by putting enough public pressure on this issue to force a policy change. If you care about your scientists, start calling your representatives and make sure to tell them how unhappy you are with the US targeting acquisition and policy, and ask them what they are going to do about it if they want to deserve your vote.
- Kaibeezy 6mo agoCame here looking for the SC comments, was disappointed. (doorbell rings)
- Melatonic 6mo agoSurprised they don't mention any of the scientists and engineers that were on flight MH370 (disappearance still unsolved) from Freescale
- panda-giddiness 6mo agoI'm surprised this article is gaining traction on HN when it's propping up such obvious conspiratorial drivel. For a counterpoint I would recommend this article [1], but I'll summarize the main points here: - The investigation concerns somewhere between four and a dozen people spanning nearly half a decade. A dozen people dying or disappearing over the course of 4 years is hardly the statistical anomaly the articles claims it to be. - Despite attempts to link these scientists together, there really is no common thread. One person was a biologist, not a rocket scientist; and two of the "scientists" weren't even scientists at all. - Many of these purported "mysterious" deaths are hardly that mysterious. Two likely died of natural causes, one was murdered by a former classmate, and one disappeared while hiking. Most of the others appeared to have suffered from psychological distress. And look, I don't want to minimize these people. These deaths and disappearances are all tragedies. The families and friends deserve closure. But dragging them into the conspiracy theory circuit is not going to do them any favors. If anything, it will likely make matters worse. And as a scientist myself, the administration's "concern" about missing scientists feels like a slap in the face. This administration has been more hostile towards us than any other in modern history. I'll leave the article with the last word because I couldn't have worded it any better. > Ironically, America doesn’t seem to need much help when it comes to disappearing scientists. About 1,000 employees have been laid off from NASA’s JPL in the past few years. One senior scientist who is still there told my colleague Ross Andersen last October that he’d never seen the place so empty and lifeless. In the meantime, the Trump administration has repeatedly proposed cutting NASA’s science research funding in half, a plan that would surely lead to further loss of staff at JPL, not to mention the abandonment of probes that have been sent into our solar system. > And while the FBI looks into potential foreign involvement in professors’ deaths at MIT and Caltech, the Trump administration says that it intends to halve the budget of the National Science Foundation, which in recent years has furnished those two schools with hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants. Already, more than 40 percent of the NSF’s scientific staff have left or been fired. > This is just a subset of the harms that have been done to the U.S. research enterprise since the start of 2025. In response, some top scientists have been getting up and walking out the door. Their absence can’t be blamed on China, Russia, or Iran. Maybe the White House should look into it. --- [1] "The Single Dumbest Conspiracy Theory of 2026." The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientists/686885/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientis...
- littlecranky67 6mo ago> McCasland, 68, disappeared from his Albuquerque home on Feb. 27 of this year, leaving on foot with only a .38 caliber revolver. [...] Government contractor Steven Garcia, [...] disappeared from Albuquerque in August 2025, last seen on surveillance footage leaving on foot with a handgun. Not american, so I can't judge if this is a common thing or irregular, but both were last seen carrying firearms as if they'd be thinking someone is after them.
- actionfromafar 6mo agoSuicide by gun isn't uncommon either.
- littlecranky67 6mo agoIt is probably more uncommon that they leave by foot in New Mexico - I mean where are some 60-year old going to go by foot and shot themselves without their bodies being found.
- redsocksfan45 6mo ago[dead]
- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- quietsegfault 6mo agouhh .. the desert?
- AnimalMuppet 6mo agoOn the other hand, if you were non-suicidal and going for a walk in the desert, you might take a gun, to protect you from rattlesnakes, coyotes, javalinas... (or are javalinas just an Arizona thing?)
- poulpy123 6mo ago11 disappearances over 4 years and 4 states : - 1 rocket scientist lost while hiking - 1 astrophysicist killed at home by someone arrested a few months before at his home with a gun - 1 physicist in another field killed without cause of death made public - 1 engineer in instrumentation killed also without the cause made public - 1 schizophrenic crank woman died by suicide - 1 plasma and nuclear scientist killed at home by a jealous former classmate who went just after on a mass killings spree - 1 pharmatical scientist found in a lake after missing - 1 military executive who left with only his gun and disappeared - 1 administrative employee walked from home and disappeared after leaving her car and personal phone behind - 1 decade year old retiree from the same laboratory who did the same - 1 property custodian from a totally different place also left with a gun and disappeared Totally aliens https://img.astroawani.com/2014-03/51395638721_freesize.jpg https://img.astroawani.com/2014-03/51395638721_freesize.jpg
- buran77 6mo agoThe three companies mentioned have together maybe up to 50k employees (quick internet search, don't quote me on that). 11 of them (various roles, some out of the game for years) dying or going missing over many years in a country with a pretty high criminality and suicide rates rates doesn't sound very surprising.
- MagicMoonlight 6mo agoThey’re also some of the most strategically valuable companies if you are say an evil country that wants to build long range nuclear missiles or advance your space programme.
- b9apratus 6mo ago[dead]
- ineedasername 6mo agoOut of 50k people? These specific of backgrounds and scenarios of their death/disappearence? No. That is surprising. Any statistics you'd find about the rates of any one or more of these kinds of disappearances are going to be population level, averaged out over groups that are much higher risk and therefore skew the average rates to seem higher than their priors actually dictate for many sub populations, eg, working professionals at large corporations of this specific type. Surprising != something actually being connected, but it sure as hell is surprising and isn't something to dismiss as "well, law of large numbers so ::shrug::"
- rbanffy 6mo agoDid the missing ones, by any chance, manage to assemble interocitors?
- zimpenfish 6mo agoA good rule of thumb is that whatever James Comer believes, believing the opposite is correct 99% of the time. The man is, for want of a better word, a full-on Republican dipshit performing dipshittery in an attempt to get Trump to notice him. (His wikipedia page is an excellent summary of his asshattery.)
- rickydroll 6mo agoAn update on this conspiracy theory, err, umm, mystery from that One true source of truth, J.D. Vance. err umm @DaveJorgenson https://youtube.com/shorts/wJcjMfJbgio?si=HzDXoR-_3-aiJoPy https://youtube.com/shorts/wJcjMfJbgio?si=HzDXoR-_3-aiJoPy
- TruffleLabs 6mo agoNational Center for Health Statistics Deaths and Mortality https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
- iamfromk 6mo agoThis looks like a case worthy of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully
- ndsipa_pomu 6mo agoI blame the Trisolarians
- ozten 6mo agoNapkin Math by Sabine Hossenfelder: - people working in space top secret research 20,000 (conservative estimate, probably much smaller) - adult disappearances 1/50k to 1/100k per year - demographics are stable, high earners, so more like 1/100k per year or less - so for the pool of 20k, then 0.2 per year on average - these disappearances are a 1:10,000 to 1:20,000 probability - homicides made this situation even more unlikely 1:100,000 Conclusions: A conspiracy is highly unlikely, but the situation is very unlikely. Shrug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEnvorobhEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEnvorobhEE
- frcadwaladyr 6mo agoEverything old is new again… https://www.chicagotribune.com/1988/04/17/scientists-deaths-mystify-british/ https://www.chicagotribune.com/1988/04/17/scientists-deaths-... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/scientists-deaths-are-under-the-microscope/article25296255/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/scientists-deaths...
- lofaszvanitt 6mo agoOoooh, people with above average intelligence.... mmm, juicy bits for the otherworldy entities.... :D