Most Americans think government is withholding UFO knowledge

The biggest divide in the UFO debate is no longer over whether intelligent life exists. It is over whether the government is telling Americans the truth about what it knows. A new CBS poll found that most Americans believe intelligent life exists on other planets, one in five think contact with humans has already happened, and eight in 10 say the government knows more about UFOs than it is saying.

That gap matters because belief in extraterrestrial life is not the same thing as belief in official secrecy. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found 65% of Americans said their best guess was that intelligent life exists on other planets, while fewer than half held that view in 2010. On the secrecy question, the public has been even more skeptical for longer: Gallup found in 2019 that 68% believed the government knows more about UFOs than it has conveyed, and a 2024 YouGov survey found only 11% said Washington had told the public everything it knows.

The latest polling suggests that the release of UFO files has done little to cool that suspicion. CBS said four in 10 Americans had watched videos released with the federal government’s UAP files, and that viewers were especially likely to say extraterrestrial life may already have visited Earth. The same poll found 17% of Americans say they have personally seen something they believed was a UFO, a share that remains close to recent Gallup readings and above levels from the 1970s.

Public reaction to a hypothetical encounter is less apocalyptic than pop culture would suggest. Americans said they would be more fascinated than afraid if extraterrestrials arrived, though many also expected nerves and unease. That mix of curiosity and distrust helps explain why each new document dump only deepens the politics around disclosure: the Pentagon released 64 more UFO files in May after President Donald Trump ordered agencies in February to identify and release records tied to UFOs, UAPs, alien life and extraterrestrial life. The files may clarify sightings; they have not closed the trust gap.