The great American mystery of 2026 began, as so many do, with a Silver Alert. In late February, retired Air Force Major General and former astronautical engineer Neil McCasland left his New Mexico home for a walk and didn't return. Social media, ever the bastion of restraint, immediately concluded he'd been abducted for his knowledge of "America's deepest, darkest secrets." His wife's Facebook post attempting to quell "misinformation" was, predictably, a spectacular failure.
The dots were then feverishly collected. Monica Reza, an advanced-materials researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), had disappeared while hiking near Los Angeles in June 2025. An MIT physicist was murdered in December. Novelist and podcast contrarian Walter Kirn declared this "an enemy action." The list grew to include eleven individuals, prompting House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer to muse about "something sinister" and another member to suggest China, Russia, or Iran. Last week, on the White House lawn, President Trump told Fox News he'd just been in a meeting about it. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt promised "no stone will be unturned."
This is how flagrant nonsense ascends to the highest levels of U.S. politics and media. It's not even a coherent conspiracy theory, as there is no pattern to explain. The theorists can't even agree on what field is under threat. Fox's Peter Doocy said it was scientists "with access to classified stuff - nuclear material, aerospace." Kirn offered the less-coherent "most advanced realms of space-rocket propulsion and, you know, Air Force - NASA - type endeavors."
Their attempts sound stupid because the list has no common expertise. Yes, some are physicists or engineers from government labs. But the list also includes Jason Thomas, a chemical biologist for Novartis working on drug discovery, and Melissa Casias, a Los Alamos National Laboratory administrative assistant. Then there's Amy Eskridge, a "scientist" in the same way a subway preacher is a "theologian." She claimed her NASA-engineer father discovered antigravity and spoke of a friend, a "katana-wielding, time-traveling soldier" named Dan.
The bigger problem is that these deaths and disappearances aren't unexplained mysteries. Reza went missing while hiking. Two JPL-affiliated astrophysicists, each about 60, likely died of natural causes. The MIT physicist was murdered by a former classmate. Personal distress was a factor: Thomas was distraught over losing his parents; Casias had significant personal problems; McCasland was tormented by brain fog. Eskridge, in a 2020 interview where she said she was drunk and high, described paranoid delusions about her window being closed and her boyfriend's headphone charger being unplugged. She died in June 2022.
Note that date: June 2022. Doocy described the scientists as having "all gone missing or turned up dead in the last couple of months." In reality, the cited instances span nearly four years, from Eskridge's 2022 suicide to McCasland's 2026 disappearance. With deaths from natural causes, murder, and disappearances, and a mix of scientists and non-scientists, no coincidence exists. It's a p-hacked panic.
Ironically, America doesn't need foreign help to lose scientists. About 1,000 employees have been laid off from NASA's JPL in recent years. The Trump administration has repeatedly proposed cutting NASA's science research funding in half. While the FBI looks into professors' deaths, the administration intends to halve the National Science Foundation's budget, which gave MIT and Caltech hundreds of millions in grants; over 40% of NSF's scientific staff have already left. This is the real attrition. Their absence can't be blamed on China, Russia, or Iran. Maybe the White House should look into that.