FBI looks into dead or missing scientists tied to NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX
fortune.com114 points by ineedasername 5 hours ago
114 points by ineedasername 5 hours ago
Of 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.
I'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.
A 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
Could be nothing, or could be a new Havana Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome
What's sad is, 5-10 years ago, no adversary would think simply off-ing American scientists was effective strategy, America was a new scientist generation machine.
Now thanks to Research funding falling off a cliff and massive immigration restrictions, this is no longer true.
"Let's stop with the accusations. It was an old cat. He just happen to fall down while we were shooting." -- Adams aebler
True. Whether or not it's coincidental they have to look into it.
Unfortunately the people 'looking into it' have currently demonstrated that they are incapable of looking into anything in good faith.
You think the FBI won't investigate in good faith?
Remember, sarcasm on the internet is difficult. Do you think Kash "forgot his safety blanket" Patel will direct FBI in good faith?
it does not pass the smell test, because what's the purpose of communicating about this FBI ongoing investigation ? at best it won't harm the investigation. it's probably propaganda
Also, some plasma/antigravity researches like the Chinese-origin one in America, among others.
This 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.
> 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.
I 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.
Deaths 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.
So are you saying that each of these "experts" is not an actual top of field expert but merely one of hundreds of expert cogs (per field!) in a giant machine so vast that of course some of them will crashout, be kidnapped, blackmailed, die outright, agree to a global government psyop, etc? But that's so much less fun, especially when you consider the espionage angle.
It reminds me of The Three-Body Problem novel/series. At the beginning, the police is investigating on multiple suicides by scientists.
I think its a fairly common plot. Its also the plot of So many steps to death by Agatha Christie.
Once I saw “James Comer” I knew I could ignore this.
Yeah. Even without that it feels like one of those things where people see something that looks fishy, but given the large number of potential people involved, it's not actually weird at all.
But Comer... oof, it's hard to take seriously anything he focuses on.
But who knows? Broken clocks, twice a day, etc.
James Coomey
From 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.
Not to be confused with James Comey.
I read his autobiography. Surely that entitles me to one irrelevant crude sex joke.
Uhhh, the autobiography of which one though?
As for irrelevant crude sex jokes, go for it if makes any contribution here, I won't be offended, whenever you're ready.
One 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.
The scientists are being killed by space fireballs!? This is conspiracy bigger than I thought!
Odd, I saw this bubble up on social media this week as a tinfoil hat curiosity. I don't know what's real anymore.
There'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.
The 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?
Intercepting a meteor falling to Earth may be not too unlike intercepting a ballistic missile in its terminal descent from high altitude.
Something about ufo conspiracy theories.
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Turns out scientists die too?
> 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.
I 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.
Now 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.
Struggling 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?
How many of the disappearances were defections?
Doesn't seem connected, but makes a nice film. I think ignorance is bliss and due to the current climate, many people checking out...