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Gizmodo: Can You Find the UFOs in These Newly Released Pentagon Videos?

3 min read

Summary

Gizmodo’s Matt Novak (May 8, 2026) treats the PURSUE Release 01 at war.gov/UFO as a “Where’s Waldo”–style exercise — most clips are just small dots — but singles out dow-uap-pr38 (2013) as genuinely intriguing for its eight-pointed-star geometry. Frames the rollout as political theater by donald-trump: a “first tranche” promoted with “maximum transparency” rhetoric but personally treated by Trump as a “Have Fun and Enjoy!” curiosity, which Novak reads as evidence that the administration itself does not believe the material is significant. Embeds a media-criticism thread aligning the release with the disclosure-as-distraction critique: pre-release “Earth-shattering / religion-questioning” hype as “transparent” cover for the Iran war, record-low consumer sentiment, and high gas prices. Adds an underappreciated methodological caveat: many DoD-listed “date taken” fields are January 1, which Novak suspects is a filler convention for year-only metadata — a useful caution for anyone catalog-mining the release.

Key Claims

  • Pentagon released videos, images, and PDFs at the war.gov/UFO domain on May 8, 2026; Novak flags the domain styling as “intentionally trying to appear mysterious.”
  • Most videos are visually thin — a small dot quickly floating by — but DOW-UAP-PR38 (2013) shows a shape “resembling an eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length.”
  • Trump described the drop on Truth Social as the “first tranche” of “maximum transparency,” but his casual “Have Fun and Enjoy!” framing signals the admin itself does not believe the contents are significant.
  • Pre-release hype claiming the videos would be “Earth-shattering” and would lead people to question religious faith is dismissed as “ridiculous propaganda” and a distraction from administration political pressures.
  • Many of the DoD-listed “date taken” fields are January 1 of various years, which Novak argues is likely filler indicating only year-level precision — a metadata caveat for catalog use.
  • 27+ video files were released with technical specifications and timestamps; Novak walks through the full set.

Notable Quotes

“Today’s the day. The U.S. military has finally started to release the much-hyped UFO videos … many have a Where’s Waldo? quality.”

“Video DOW-UAP-PR38, for example, was captured in 2013 and includes a shape ‘resembling an eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length.’ It’s unclear what we’re looking at there.”

“If he or his advisors believed there was anything significant in here, he wouldn’t be treating it in such a relaxed manner.” — Matt Novak

“The buzz on social media … was that the upcoming UAP revelations would be Earth-shattering and even lead some people to question their religious faith. But that’s obviously ridiculous propaganda and a transparent effort to hype the content in a way to distract from all of the Trump regime’s failures right now.” — Matt Novak

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