Beyond the Fold

Forecasting the unfalsifiable.

On February 14th, Barack Obama appeared on a podcast and was asked whether aliens are real. “They’re real,” he said, “but I haven’t seen them.” He was making a point about the statistical improbability of a universe this large being otherwise uninhabited. The clip went viral. By evening, four million people had watched it.

Trump accused him of leaking classified information. He then directed Pete Hegseth (my bad - Secretary of War) to begin identifying and releasing government files related to “alien and extraterrestrial life, UAP, and UFOs,” citing “tremendous interest shown.”

Hegseth reposted the announcement with an alien emoji and a saluting emoji. Three days later, asked whether he personally believed in extraterrestrials, he said the task was not on his “bingo card” but he was “digging in” and would find out “along with all of you.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence posted on social media that the files would “soon” be declassified.

Last week, the White House registered aliens.gov and alien.gov through CISA’s federal domain registry. Currently, neither connects to anything. The deputy press secretary responded to press inquiries with “Stay tuned!” and an alien emoji. Both domains were registered while CISA is not currently accepting new .gov requests, due to a lapse in federal funding.

The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, AARO, was created in 2022 to investigate unidentified anomalous phenomena. It has reviewed over 2,000 cases. Every one traced back to drones, balloons, atmospheric effects, or sensor artifacts. Sean Kirkpatrick, its first director, said of the incoming file release: “Nothing would have made me happier in that job but to have discovered alien technology and rolled it out. I don’t expect to see anything new.” He described Trump’s announcement as “a distraction for the administration.”

The reason the interesting UAP evidence can’t be released is structural. The most compelling cases are compelling because classified sensors detected them: military radar, satellite tasking, signals intelligence. Releasing the footage means revealing what those systems can see, at what resolution, from what angle. Past disclosures have leaned on pilot reports and low-resolution cockpit video while withholding the metadata. The result is always redacted PDFs.

The disclosure community has been predicting imminent official confirmation since the Clinton administration. Obama, Hillary Clinton, Biden, Trump’s first term, Trump’s second term, and Pope Leo XIV have all been identified at various points as the figure about to initiate disclosure. In 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that hundreds of Air Force personnel had been told, falsely, that a secret program to harvest alien technology existed. The disclosure community cited this as evidence of cover-up activity.

The most useful number in the Manifold alien market cluster is not any of the confirmation probabilities. “Will the US Government make a show of declassifying everything on UFOs/UAPs before 2030?” sits at 44%.

Markets around whether the US ACTUALLY confirms that aliens exist before 2027 hover around 7-8%. Traders think there’s a real chance of an elaborate public performance of transparency, but a much smaller chance the performance amounts to anything.

Traders are also forecasting specifically if the US confirms aliens in 2026, what kind will they be? The leading answer at 49% is Microbial life, with the runner up at 27% being “completely unspecified (US government confidently asserts aliens exist but provides no further information).”

There's also a market on whether the US President or UK Prime Minister will confirm non-human intelligence before end of 2026, sitting at 13% - Keir Starmer apparently included for completeness.

This sits alongside markets on whether the US President themself will confirm extra-terrestrial existence.

Moving on from the politics, we have “Will we have contact with intelligent alien life by 2030?” sits at 5%, roughly the same as the JFK assassination being linked to aliens before 2040.

“Will the first sign of extraterrestrial intelligence be identified as artificial intelligence by 2030?” is at 13%, which is a more interesting question than it gets credit for. “Alien invasion before GTA6?” is at 4%.

The most substantive alien science of the past year happened nowhere near Washington. In April 2025, a Cambridge team using the James Webb Space Telescope announced that the atmosphere of K2-18b, a water-rich planet 124 light-years away, appears to contain dimethyl sulfide, a molecule produced on Earth exclusively by marine microbial life. The detection reached 3-sigma confidence. The lead researcher called it “a revolutionary moment.” Four independent teams reanalyzed the data over the summer and found the signal was probably ethane, or red noise in the mid-infrared, or a real detection that needs more observation time. One analysis found 87.5% of retrieval approaches showed no statistically significant evidence for DMS at all.

“Will K2-18b be generally agreed to harbor alien life by 2027?” is at 5%, with a scientific consensus sitting at the same odds.

This arc is mostly familiar. The phosphine-on-Venus announcement in 2020. The 1996 Martian meteorite bacteria claim. All had similar beginnings. K2-18b received a fraction of the coverage of Obama’s podcast clip.

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb has a public bet with skeptic Michael Shermer: $150,000 against $1,000 that alien visitation will not be confirmed by 2030. Markets broadly agree with him. The aliens.gov domain expires in 2027. So does the confirmation market. Neither currently has any content.

Happy Forecasting!
- Above the Fold