Greetings Earthlings! This week’s newsletter is a little longer on the word count and shorter on the sections. I conducted a deep dive into the wild conspiracies surrounding the missing scientists and had a lot to say. Perhaps you’ll find my outcome surprising. Spoiler alert: I wish it was aliens. I also return to space with a look at what might happen to astronomy as we begin to move earth’s infrastructure to orbit. This week’s tip dives into one of the easiest ways scammers learn about you: a simple search. Enjoy and as always, stay safe out there!

~ Eric

In the past three years, a loosely connected group of eleven individuals including scientists, engineers, and defense-affiliated professionals, have died, disappeared, or been killed under circumstances that, when viewed together, raise uncomfortable questions.

Individually, each case has an explanation, or at least a working theory. Taken together, they form a pattern that is difficult to ignore, and even harder to define.

The group spans disciplines but shares a common orbit: advanced science, national security, and government-adjacent research.

At first glance, the group appears unified by expertise in advanced scientific fields. On closer inspection, the connections are more diffuse: some worked in aerospace, others in nuclear-adjacent environments, still others in pharmaceutical or academic settings. A few held security clearances or operated near sensitive government programs. Many did not.

What binds them most tightly is not their work, but the timing and ambiguity surrounding their fates.

The clustering of these cases (particularly in 2025 and early 2026) has drawn the attention of lawmakers and federal agencies. Members of Congress have requested briefings from the Department of Energy, the FBI, and other agencies, seeking to determine whether any of the incidents are connected.

The FBI has reportedly begun reviewing the cases for overlap, though officials have not publicly identified a unifying thread. Investigators face a fundamental challenge: each case sits at a different point on the spectrum—from confirmed homicide to unexplained disappearance to deaths with limited public detail.

At present, the question is not whether each case has an explanation. Most do, at least in isolation. The question is whether the explanations, when viewed together, still hold. As always happens when there are no readily available answers to any conundrum, conspiracy theories abound.

Among the more serious possibilities is that one or more of these individuals were targeted by foreign intelligence services.

The premise is not far-fetched. U.S. adversaries have long sought to penetrate American scientific and defense ecosystems, targeting individuals with access to sensitive information. Laboratories such as Los Alamos, facilities like the Kansas City National Security Campus, and research centers at MIT and NASA represent high-value environments.

Several individuals in this group operated within or adjacent to such spaces.

Putting on my counterintelligence/spy hunter hat, the evidence for a coordinated campaign remains thin. The individuals did not share a common project, timeline, or clearly identifiable area of sensitive overlap. The methods involved—disappearances, shootings, unexplained deaths—lack the consistency typically associated with state-sponsored operations (real life is not an episode of The Americans).

If foreign intelligence is involved, it is more likely in isolated cases than as part of a unified effort. As of now, no public findings substantiate even that narrower claim.

The most exciting and speculative theory suggests that some of these individuals were connected to classified programs involving unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) or advanced propulsion technologies and were silenced as a result. On a side note, I miss calling these objects in the spy UFOs.

In the words of Tom DeLonge, front man for one of my favorite bands, Blink-182: "Aliens f**king exist and the government has already acknowledged that they're real.”

Sadly, for those who believe “The Truth is out There,” this theory draws loosely on associations. McCasland’s tenure at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, long rumored in UFO lore, and Eskridge’s public interest in anti-gravity research have been cited as circumstantial links.

But beyond these associations, the theory lacks evidentiary support. No official statements, investigative findings, or credible reporting tie these cases to UAP programs or extraterrestrial phenomena.

The persistence of this theory more likely proves my point that when information is scarce and the subject matter is technical, speculation that gravitates to the extraordinary fills the void. And maybe, also, we all want to believe.

I hate to pull the rug from the more exciting theories, but Occam's razor—the premise that the obvious or simplest explanation is usually the most plausible likely wins: these cases are mose likely not connected.

The group includes:

In big groups—especially in high-pressure jobs—things like this can happen, even if they’re rare. What looks like a pattern might just be us connecting dots after the fact, not a real cause-and-effect. My passion as an investigator has always led me to facts over theories.

Still, coincidence alone does not fully resolve the unease. The concentration of cases in New Mexico, home to Los Alamos National Laboratory and a network of defense-related activity, stands out. While this may reflect geography and population density within specialized fields, it remains an area of interest for investigators and alien enthusiasts alike.

What ultimately gives this story its staying power is not what is known, but what is not.

Several cases remain unresolved. Others lack publicly available detail. Institutions involved, whether federal agencies, research laboratories, or law enforcement, have released limited information, often for legitimate reasons. But the result is the same: an information vacuum.

In that vacuum, narratives thrive.

For now, the most responsible conclusion is a cautious one. There is no confirmed evidence of a coordinated campaign—foreign, domestic, or otherwise. There is also no definitive explanation that ties all eleven cases together.

What exists instead is a convergence of tragedy, secrecy, and timing that are enough to warrant investigation, but not enough to support a singular theory.

Until more information emerges, the story remains suspended between coincidence and connection, its meaning unresolved.

And that, perhaps, is what makes it so compelling.

SpaceX wants to move data centers off Earth.

In January, the company announced plans to launch up to one million orbital data centers that would send our computing infrastructure circling the planet, powered by uninterrupted solar energy. The logic is straightforward: AI is consuming staggering amounts of electricity, and Earth's power grid is already straining. Move the compute to space, harvest energy directly from the sun, beam the results back down.

Then there's Reflect Orbital, a startup proposing to do something even stranger: sell sunlight. Using orbiting mirrors roughly the size of football fields, the company would redirect sunlight on demand, cutting through cloud cover for outdoor events or agricultural use. Instant sunshine, delivered by app.

Taken together, this goes beyond the growing numbers of satellites providing GPS or communications. The companies of the future will place earth infrastructure in orbit— energy, computing, even light itself—being engineered off-planet at scale.

In this case, the shadow may be literal.

Astronomers are raising alarms. A million satellites, many larger and brighter than current constellations, positioned too high to fall into Earth's shadow, would remain illuminated even at midnight, streaking constantly across the sky. Reflect Orbital's mirrors would compound the problem, increasing global sky brightness to the point where some estimates suggest the night sky could become multiple times brighter than it is today.

Astronomy relies on darkness. With enough orbital traffic and reflected light, observatories lose data, faint targets become unobservable, and the window that has let us see across the universe might close permanently.

And beyond science, something more human is at stake. The night sky has been a constant across all of human history. The same stars, the same patterns, have carried stories across thousands of years and countless generations.

We are now in a position to overwrite it.

The question is no longer whether we will build in space. It's whether we can do it without losing what made us look up there in the first place.

Public records like home purchases, voter registrations and court filings are quietly stitched together by data brokers and sold in neat little packages. That’s how a stranger suddenly knows your bank, your address, and the last four digits of an account. It’s also how they pull off deeply personal scams that feel real enough to bypass your skepticism. The most common plays are predictable once you see them:

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you don’t need social media to be exposed. Your data is already out there, indexed and searchable. The fix isn’t perfect, but it’s practical, and worth doing before you become someone’s case study:

The rule to remember: the more specific the scam feels, the more likely it was built using your own data.

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I joined Andy Murphy on The Secure Family Podcast to pull back the curtain on how cybercrime really works today—and it’s not what most people think.

We got into how scams actually begin, why attackers study you before they strike, and how AI and deepfakes are making fraud more convincing than ever. From billion-dollar text scams to highly targeted attacks, I break down what I’ve seen, how this industry has evolved, and—most importantly—how you can spot these threats early and protect yourself and your family before you become the target.

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Stay safe out there!

~ Eric