If 3I/ATLAS is a Comet, Why Would the CIA “Neither Deny, Nor Confirm” the Existence of Records on It?
Avi Loeb
9 hours ago
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An image of 3I/ATLAS at 3:34 UTC on December 30, 2025 from nine 120-second exposures, taken with the Virtual Telescope Project facility in Manciano, Italy. A prominent anti-tail jet is clearly observed in the direction of the Sun, towards the lower left. (Image credit:
Virtual Telescope)
So far, 3I/ATLAS displayed a number of unexplained features relative to familiar comets — as I listed
here. One could have hoped that these puzzles would trigger a healthy scientific debate about the nature of 3I/ATLAS. Instead, the case was officially closed by NASA officials without any discussion on the puzzling nature of these anomalies.
The anomalous features include the existence of a prominent anti-tail jet directed at the Sun both before and after perihelion, the geometric alignment to within 8 degrees between the rotation axis of 3I/ATLAS at large distances and the sunward direction, the alignment to within 5 degrees of the orbital plane of 3I/ATLAS with the ecliptic plane, as well as the prominence of nickel relative to iron in the gas that 3I/ATLAS sheds — reminiscent of industrially-produced nickel alloys.
On December 31, 2025, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) replied to a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiry by John Greenewald Jr., that it can “neither deny nor confirm the existence or nonexistence of records” related to 3I/ATLAS. The response was tweeted
here.
That this information is treated as sensitive enough to be classified by the CIA is surprising, given that NASA officials stated decisively at a press conference on November 19, 2025 (posted
here), that 3I/ATLAS is definitely a comet of natural origin. If this conclusion was clear all along to everyone within government and academia — as NASA officials presented the case, then why would the CIA treat the possible existence of records dealing with a natural comet as sensitive enough to be classified?
The simplest interpretation of the CIA response to the FOIA request is that some government officials wished to verify that 3I/ATLAS is not a black swan event, posing a potential threat to society even as comet experts regard such a possibility as highly unlikely. By multiplying a small probability for the existence of a threat with its high impact factor on society, the sober conclusion is that such events must be taken seriously and monitored.
This lesson, akin to
Pascal’s Wager, was learned the hard way by the residents of the City of Troy after they welcomed the
Trojan Horse, as well as by intelligence agencies like the CIA after their miscalculations in gauging the risk from the events that unfolded on September 11, 2001 and October 7, 2023.
Under such circumstances, NASA officials were encouraged to deliver the likely scientific interpretation, while at the same time — the serious consideration of a black swan event by the CIA was hidden from public view in order to prevent panic from taking hold for no good reason.
This is a wise policy for mitigating societal unrest or instability of financial markets at a time when the reality of a black swan event is still regarded as highly unlikely. In order to maintain the public’s trust, the CIA would prefer not to raise a false alarm — like the shepherd who repeatedly shouted “Wolf!” — so when a real wolf came, no one believed him. The “neither deny nor confirm” is the best way to keep the investigation of black swan events hidden from view.
If the above interpretation is correct, 3I/ATLAS represents the first case of an astronomical object for which the “neither deny nor confirm” response was adopted purposely by the intelligence agencies.
During the summer months of 2025, I proposed the “Loeb Classification Scale” for the threat level of interstellar objects as alien tech. The scale was quantified in three peer-reviewed papers that I co-authored with Omer Eldadi, Gershon Tennenbaum and Oem Trivedi, which were first posted
here,
here and
here. During the same time, I alerted policy makers to the possibility that 3I/ATLAS might be a black swan event, as mentioned
here. Perhaps someone was listening to my request.
Today, several reporters asked me for comments on the latest report (accessible
here) on limits of technological radio transmission by 3I/ATLAS, based on data from the Green Bank Telescope.
I clarified to the reporters that I encouraged the research team of the
Breakthrough Listen Initiative to check for radio signals from 3I/ATLAS, because the arrival direction of 3I/ATLAS into the solar system aligned with the direction of the “Wow! Signal” from 1977 to within 9 degrees — with a chance probability of 0.6% as discussed
here. The new data rules out a technological signal in the radio frequency band of 1–12 GHz towards Earth over a period of 5 hours between 04:15–09:15 UTC on December 18, 2025.
It is unclear whether one should expect a technological object to transmit radio signals to its senders. Such signals would take several tens of thousands of years to cross the Milky-Way galaxy, whereas the time that 3I/ATLAS spends inside the solar system — all the way from and to the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, is only 16,000 years. Interstellar objects are unlikely to continuously transmit to their senders, because they do not have enough time to benefit from a two-way dialog.
Given that their journey takes billions of years, the chance of a transmission on any particular 5-hour interval is miniscule. Moreover, such a signal may not be transmitted in the direction of Earth or at the frequency band that was monitored. To save energy, an efficient signaling would be beamed and compressed into a short burst with a small duty cycle. A proper observing program would have monitored 3I/ATLAS from many directions for a long period of time and not just over a 5-hour window.
The data collection on 3I/ATLAS will not be over until it passes near the Hill radius of Jupiter. Hopefully, the curious community of government officials will be swayed by the dogmatic community of comet experts so as to check whether 3I/ATLAS deploys any small probes as new satellites of Jupiter. Unless we check, we might never know if this swan is white or black.
Sources:
One kilometer diameter measurement from October 2025 Forbes paper analysis
260 billion kilogram mass calculation from diameter and density
Five kilometer minimum size from May September detection limits
33 trillion kilogram minimum mass creating 120 times contradiction
How scientists use non-gravitational acceleration to measure comet size
Gas ejection speed 1600 kilometers per hour from Webb telescope data
Mass loss rate 150 kilograms per second breaking the physics
NASA downward revisions changing acceleration values multiple times
Temperature differences causing potential mass changes over time
Asymmetric jet orientations complicating measurements
Density assumption variations affecting all calculations
Measurement uncertainty ranges that might resolve contradiction
Particle ejection speeds 2 meters per second versus 500 meters per second for gas
Anti-tail extending 400,000 kilometers toward the Sun defying physics
One kilometer versus five kilometer size contradiction explained
Water ice fragments driven by carbon dioxide sublimation never seen before
Carbon dioxide ice 87 percent composition versus 4 percent water flipped ratio
