Karl Nell’s Disclosure Campaign Plan
Yearbook 2025/26
In my last article I wrote about Karl Nell’s philosophical underpinnings for UFO acceptance. Some important history we can glean from Nell’s recent talks is that there has been an ongoing, concerted campaign to nudge and coerce the US government into UFO disclosure. The antecedent to this campaign dates back to 2017 when Chris Mellon, Lue Elizondo and Jay Stratton put in action their Five Pillars of Engagement (covered in Yearbook 2024, chapter 3.5]). That got disclosure advocates’ foot in the door. Nell addresses what they did with that leverage in the years afterward.
First Nell explains why government UFO disclosure is such a hard challenge. He offers six reasons governments are unwilling to engage with their publics on this topic in a fulsome, direct, and serious way.
Karl Nell’s Reasons for Non-DisclosureReasons for Non-Disclosure… that Must be Addressed Preemptively
PRO
1. National Security.
Keep Knowledge from Adversaries
Protect the People from Themselves
2. Lack of Credible Plan.
NHI Intentions Remain Unknown
New Physics / Technologies Have Unpredictable Ramification(s)
3. Societal Disruption.
Challenge to Legitimacy of Existing Authority Structures
Ontological Shock / Memetic Virus / Financial Instability
False Authority Syndrome / Stagnation of Initiative
4. Covert Agreement.
Unaccountable Parties Advancing Unknown Agenda
Disclosure Will Precipitate / Accelerate Negative Repercussion
NHI Quid Pro Quo
5. Cover for Misdeeds.
Significant Criminal Misconduct / Violation of Civil Liberties
Unequitable Accrual of Power, Privilege, or Monetary Gain
6. Organizational Intransigence / Distraction from Priorities.
CON
1. Moral Right.
NHI Existence is Ultimately Not Government Information
Pursuit of Happiness Requires Knowledge of the World as It Is
Government is For the People, Not the Reverse
Restore Proper Oversight and Accountability / Redress Misdeeds
2. Avoid Catastrophic Disclosure.
All Non-Disclosure [PRO] concerns will ultimately be realized, unless:
Manage Risk through Controlled Disclosure
Transition Approach from Reactive to Proactive
Superintend the Message and the Timing
Mitigate Negative Effects of UAP Knowledge
Aggressively Plan Transition to Post-Disclosure World
3. Prevent Loss of Technological Dominance.
Some Evidence Suggests USA May Be Losing a UAP “Arms Race”
Compartmentalization Hinders the Scientific Method
Whole-of-Government Approach Required
Engage Best and Brightest Experts from Every Field
Spearhead Technological Breakout and Societal Advancement
I would argue these six pro reasons for non-disclosure make governments institutionally incapable of UFO acceptance, which therefore makes them incapable of treating UFO evidence seriously and doubly incapable of releasing any UFO evidence it has collected. Any such evidence would force them into a position of having to take UFO evidence more seriously, which would lead to the publicly driven imperative that the government accept UFOs as real followed by an action plan of some kind. Call this the disclosure tipping point. Between 2018 and mid-2026, the US government officially released scores of documents and imagery, but none of it triggered the tipping point I just described. In fact, most of it seems to have been curated specifically to handwave the whole question away. During these years, multiple executive branch officials who have been tasked with speaking publicly on this topic have presented evidence of conventional objects misidentified as UFOs, or they have presented snippets that look odd but also demonstrate the evidence to be completely inconclusive and indeterminate. In other cases, imagery and details from sightings reports have been redacted under the black bars of classification laws.
Like many disclosure advocates who have worked in government or understand national security, Nell is sympathetic to the government’s reasons for non-disclosure. In his talks, Nell holds up two of the six as especially controlling.
“Lack of a plan and the potential for societal disruption are key ingredients that would prevent any responsible leader from coming forward with information that they don’t have the means to address in a responsible way—would be irresponsible to do that.”
But Nell argues that this stance, understandable though it is, is untenable and must change. His three justifications for disclosure that trump the others are that it is the morally right thing to do, those negative consequences will happen anyway and can only be mitigated by a controlled plan, and it will be scientifically and economically advantageous. Nell grounds the moral case in the American tradition of democracy and freedom.
“The government exists for and by the people, and so the nature of reality is fundamentally not government information. People have a right to know the world in which we live, and the pursuit of happiness requires that knowledge, so that’s sort of the first kind of overarching philosophical foundation for this.”
Practitioners of National Power
Nell talks about how UFO disclosure intersects with the concept of elements of national power. Originally formulated in the mid-20th century as part of the realist foreign policy school of thought, it became a formalized framework of the Department of Defense in the early 21st century. DIME (diplomacy, information, military, and economics) is intended to make war plans more effective by guiding planners to account for variables from each of the elements of national power, and it has been a required learning at military colleges. Here a sample of its use, from a West Point paper: “In a real-world case of war, during the beginning of hostilities, the State and Defense Departments would assemble trained [DIME Planning Teams] that would immediately begin executing Army Design Methodology to achieve a comprehensive, DIME solution to achieve an optimal negotiated settlement.”source
Nell, who came up through the military during this time, is familiar with DIME, and sees a natural applicability with UFO disclosure. War influences and is influenced by nearly every aspect of society. So it is with disclosure. Disclosure is not a war, but it is a complex social challenge that is by this point is inextricably intertwined with the military: the military is holding useful UFO evidence that is the whole point of disclosure; the military mindset is part of the reason holding back disclosure; post-disclosure, the military will be expected to develop an assessment of UFO capabilities and a response plan. Elizondo alluded to this in his book when conveying to readers just how difficult actual UFO disclosure will be: “One must also unify and rally international allies, allay public fears and insecurities, challenge scientific and academic communities, and have a robust public outreach campaign—all at the same time. To accomplish this would require a herculean effort, not unlike a World War II military campaign.” (See Imminent; Yearbook 2024, chapter 3.5)
Nell uses a more expansive list that covers eight elements of national power: political, military, intelligence, diplomatic, information, economic, financial, legal. Perhaps based on some insider knowledge for how the legislation was drafted, he suggests that the UAP Disclosure Act’s Review Board membership was intentionally selected to represent each of these elements.
Executive Director (political)
National Security Official (military and intelligence)
Foreign Service Official (diplomatic)
Scientists or Engineer (information-natural sciences)Economist (economic and financial)
Professional Historian (information-humanities)
Sociologist (information-humanities)Biochemist / Geneticist (information-natural sciences)
Constitutional Law Scholar (legal)
Nell explains:
“So you’ve got eight elements of power, plus an executive director, and the premise for this is that disclosure is going to happen using the instruments of national power, but disclosure also impacts the instruments of national power. And so you need practitioners of the instruments of national power for the President to have confidence in the recommendations he or she is getting from this panel, such that when he implements that decision it’s going to have a ramification that’s understandable by people that are experienced in the field.”
For this reason, Nell believes the UAPDA is must-pass legislation. Disclosure cannot and will not happen without this kind of a structure. At least not any kind of disclosure we should be rooting for. The alternative is what he calls catastrophic disclosure, “where all the information is just dumped out there by an adversary or non-human intelligence to create societal disruption.” Nell worried that this outcome also carries the potential for “societal collapse.”
Disclosure Campaign Plan
To achieve all this and overcome the many challenges disclosure poses, advocates in and out of government need to be doing multiple things at once, working toward a complex set of outcomes. Nell organizes this into a framework he calls a campaign plan and lines of effort.
Table: Karl Nell’s Disclosure Campaign Stages & Non-Governmental Lines of Effort
The term disclosure is thrown around all the time, with some arguing it is happening now and others arguing it has already happened. Everyone generally agrees that it is a process rather than a single moment, but I’ve written how even within that process there’s probably going to be a tipping point where public and institutional acceptance balloons overnight (Spielberg’s 2026 movie about this is called Disclosure Day). But maybe it will be a slow drip with a small percentage of the population converting to UFO belief each year. We actually don’t know and cannot predict what disclosure will look like after the fact when he look back on that process in hindsight. So it is helpful for disclosure advocates to define not just the term but what we hope to happen as a result of disclosure and then work towards those outcomes. Nell does that here, laying out five phases of disclosure.
First comes acceptance of the reality of the UFO phenomenon; then correlate from the case files of all known characteristics and behaviors of UFOs; then characterize in scientific terms what UFOs can actually do; then determine the nature and origin of UFOs; finally, intentional engagement with the non-human intelligence that are directing the UFOs. Now, it’s true that ufologists have been doing each of these things, or claiming to, for over 70 years. But that does not constitute disclosure. Implicit in these phases is that they are tied to collective institutional and societal actions and outcomes. For it to be true disclosure, we have to do each of these things together as a society.
Nell talks a bit about what that would look like. He says we are currently midway into phase 1 because of all the members of Congress who now espouse belief in UFO existence (as I have documented in my congressional statement archive, this is a historic shift that began in 2018, one that has transpired at a slow drip, with a handful of new members coming out each year). Wider acceptance by the media, the intelligentsia, and the public (myself included) also increased in these years. The second and third phases require transferring the investigation of the phenomenon from the government over to establishment science and academia, and ultimately the open market.
“...academia, National Science Foundation you can start working through government grants in the academy. …You exercise eminent domain and bring it [UFO evidence held by private aerospace] under proper oversight. You basically make it available to a public-private partnership or competitively selected consortium. Maybe they’re working that behind the green door [classified program] if you will, in terms of a secure environment. But ultimately you learn something from that, you bring a bigger brain trust in, and you develop a means of regulating the market so you could actually turn it back over then to more of a capitalist system.”
Nell’s analogy is that in a post-disclosure future, the study and exploitation of UFOs will be akin to how nuclear energy was spun off from nuclear weapons as a privatized social benefit. Of course knowledge of UFOs would not just have one application, but would touch on and potentially reshape every aspect of society (not unlike the conversations we are currently having about AI, and look how fraught that has become). Social institutions can begin to prepare for that outcome now regardless of what the government does.
“And so those issues are actually not government issues. They’re really private sector issues and they can be worked in the private sector by professionalizing this topic, and that then lowers the barrier to entry for the government to basically just adopt those plans that are developed in the private sector. So the humanities, the natural sciences, industry and society, medicine, there are all these things that can be done in those lanes to develop the plan for the government. And as those conversations become increasingly serious, then that’s sort of soft-disclosure in itself. And and oh, by the way, you’re making progress on the problem.”
Of course none of this can get started without the government precipitating it by disclosing just enough to peak everyone’s interest. Every piece of UFO evidence that is released by the government, every expression of genuine interest by establishment institutions, ratchets up the interest and the pressure for more.
“I got to do a little disclosure; I got to get more oversight, get a little more oversight; I can bring more people in to solve the problem; I get more people in to solve the problem and I find out I didn’t have all the oversight needed. So it’s sort of a cyclic process that’s sort of interspersed with greater and greater degrees of disclosure that ultimately gets out to the public.”
This is where Congress comes in. Certain influential members of Congress and their staff have been acting in this role since at least 2018. Every year after that--until the UAPDA stalled a second time in 2025--Congress included legislative or other mandates requiring some form of UFO disclosure from the Executive Branch.
Nell says this is why the UAPDA is “not optional’’--it must pass in order to push disclosure over the next hump (recall that the UAPDA did pass in 2024, just with the all-important independent Review Board stripped from it). In his Archives of the Impossible talk, where Nell laid out his disclosure campaign plan in most detail, he went further, saying that legislation has been drafted, at least conceptually, to support the aims of each phase of the disclosure campaign. He implied that there is UFO legislation that has not yet been made public that will address later stages of the process. He applauded Kirk McConnell, a full time staffer of the Senate Armed Services Committee until his retirement, for leading this work behind the scenes. Additionally, external UFO groups like SOL and the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies and The Galileo Project have collaborated to create a briefing book for members of Congress to concisely inform them about the history of government involvement with the phenomenon.
Leaving Phase 1?
When, if ever, will we move out of Phase 1? We can only guess. What we do know is that it will require a steady drip of UFO evidence to keep people engaged and committed to the process. In 2024, the faucet was turned off (Kirkpatrick’s tenure at AARO and his anti-UFO messaging campaign; NASA turning away from the topic). But in 2025 and 2026, it seems the faucet is back on (Kosloski’s tenure at AARO; the PURSUE releases).
But we need to be real with ourselves. While the non-governmental lines of effort have made more progress, disclosure by definition will require all-of-government and society to become involved, a paradigm shift from where we are right now. It’s tempting for advocates, and even for people in government and Congress active on this topic, to convince themselves that they can do serious study--the correlation and characterization of Phases 2 and 3--without admitting they are studying UFOs. By telling themselves, gosh it’s just a big mystery and we have no idea what these things are. This was the approach of the NASA UAP Study Panel, and is the current approach of AARO. It is how many (not all) of the disclosure advocates in Congress describe what they are doing. It is why the government adopted the term UAP. They are trying to make progress while staying two steps removed from the heart of the matter.
But if Nell is right that for disclosure to even begin we must “demonstrate UAP existence” as an established and agreed upon fact, then government, academic, and scientific actors will have to say something like this: these objects are real; witness accounts of them have been broadly accurate; their capabilities are truly anomalous are represent non-human technology; let’s figure out how they work and what they are doing here. Nell imagines the reaction of leaders who finally come to this fulsome acceptance UFO existence:
“Now they know about it and maybe they’re in charge, but oh my gosh, like we got to do something about it--the actual problem, like what are what are NHI doing, and what does this mean for our society and how do we incorporate this into our worldview so you want to advance society and scientific understanding.”
This is the starting point of disclosure, not the end. The tipping point probably has to be crossed before we can say Phase 1 is complete. That still feels like a long way off. The funny thing about tipping points, however, is that they can come at any moment.