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There is growing concern around a list of 13 missing and/or dead scientists and researchers tied to advanced fields such as propulsion systems, nuclear research, anti-gravity, and, as some have speculated, UAPs. The concern has now prompted a formal inquiry by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, examining the deaths and disappearances of scientists, engineers, and security-cleared personnel tied to sensitive government programs and institutions such as Los Alamos National Laboratory and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Among those who have died are researchers affiliated with elite institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Plasma physicist Nuno F.G. Loureiro of MIT was killed on December 15, 2025, by Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente, his former classmate from Portugal, who, curiously, two days before killing Loureiro, committed the mass shooting at Brown University that killed two students in December. Though there are still questions regarding motive, federal investigators, according to CNN, concluded that Manuel appeared to target “institutions and individuals he associated with personal failure, missed opportunity and perceived injustice.”

Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, who “helped uncover dozens of stellar streams and contributed to major NASA missions including Spitzer, NEOWISE, and NEO Surveyor,” was shot and killed at his home in Llano, California. A suspect, Freddy Snyder, was arrested near the scene and faces charges including murder, carjacking, and burglary. It is reported that Grillmair did not know his shooter, and no official motive has been confirmed.

Earlier deaths include scientists from NASA’s JPL, including Michael David Hicks and Frank Maiwald. In both cases, details surrounding the cause of death remain limited in public reporting.

Then there is physicist Ning Li, who worked on advanced propulsion concepts at the University of Alabama. She reportedly died following a long health decline after being hit by a car while crossing a street on the campus in 2014, which resulted in permanent brain damage and Alzheimer’s disease.

No case on the list, however, is more curious than that of Amy Eskridge, who co-founded the Institute for Exotic Science in Huntsville, Alabama. She led the organization’s research into antigravity and advanced electrostatic propulsion systems. It’s reported that she died from a self-inflicted gunshot, but she told people close to her not to believe that she committed suicide if she was found dead, and videos of her claiming to be a victim of directed energy weapons, showing burns to her hands, are making rounds on social media. Her father is reported to have said, however, that she suffered from mental health issues and was not surprised by her death. He told News Nation, “Scientists die also, just like other people.”

More curious still are the disappearances. 

Anthony Chavez, who had worked as a construction foreman at Los Alamos National Laboratory, vanished after leaving his house on foot, leaving behind his wallet, keys, and phone. Monica Reza, an engineer at Aerojet Rocketdyne and director of materials processing at NASA’s JPL, went missing on a hike in Southern California. Melissa Casias, who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was last seen walking along a highway three miles from her home; her car was left in the driveway, and both her personal and work phones had been “reset to their factory status.” Steven Garcia, a government contractor with a security clearance, left his home on foot with just a handgun and the clothes on his back. William Neil McCasland, a retired Air Force general involved in aerospace research, disappeared from his home, leaving behind “his phone and prescription glasses but apparently took his wallet and a handgun.” (The BBC reports that McCasland’s wife suggested he may have orchestrated his own disappearance, though she noted he “‘doesn’t generally’ carry a weapon.”)

The public has every reason to speculate that something larger than coincidence is going on here, especially given the scale of foreign espionage targeting American scientific research. Take Stanford University, where Chinese spies were found to be running an intelligence operation on campus, using impersonation, social engineering, and other tactics to extract sensitive research knowledge directly from Stanford’s labs, students, and faculty. My colleague Ian Oxnevad has also reported on Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-related cases in the Midwest. At Indiana University, postdoctoral researcher Youhuang Xiang was convicted of smuggling biological materials into the United States while concealing ties to the CCP. At the University of Michigan, researcher Danhao Wang died after being questioned by U.S. authorities, with the circumstances still under investigation.

And it’s not just China and its infiltration into American higher education that gives us reason to speculate. Reporting by 60 Minutes has pointed to Russia’s GRU Unit 29155 as a likely source of Havana Syndrome incidents, attacks involving directed energy that have left U.S. officials with neurological symptoms. One official was reportedly targeted just outside the White House.

Additionally, the U.S. and Israel have carried out assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. It is not much of a leap, therefore, to think that adversarial powers might pursue similar tactics against the U.S., particularly when so many of those who have disappeared or died were tied to cutting-edge research. Nor is the phenomenon of missing scientists uniquely American. In China, too, several scientists working in sensitive fields have died under “unusual” circumstances. One such case is that of Feng Yanghe, a military AI researcher working on Taiwan invasion scenarios, who, according to Newsweek, died in an unexplained car crash in the early hours of the morning in Beijing, an incident later described in a state-linked obituary as a “sacrifice.”

The public also has little reason to assume that its own government would be fully transparent in such matters. The U.S. has a long history of failing to provide clear answers when intelligence-linked deaths occur. Take, for instance, the 1953 death of Frank Olson. Olson was a biological warfare expert tied to U.S. intelligence who was said to have “fallen” from a New York hotel window in what was ruled a suicide, but only later did it emerge that he had been unknowingly dosed with LSD as part of the CIA’s MKUltra program, the same agency that popularized the term “conspiracy theory” to sideline critics of the Warren Commission.

Not every case on this list of 13 fits into a bizarro world, and taken individually, each has an explanation that doesn’t include conspiracy. But the concentration of deaths and disappearances among researchers in highly specialized, sensitive domains does seem noncoincidental—the Wall Street Journal’s framing notwithstanding.

And these 13 cases do exist within a world where governments, including our own, target scientists tied to sensitive programs. So, we shouldn’t so quickly write off speculative questions as fringe. These cases, whether connected or not, also serve as a reminder of our vulnerabilities: that so many of America’s scientists—and our research institutions—sit at the center of global technological competition, which, along with our openness, makes them easy targets.

Acknowledging this is not a descent into paranoia.

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