QAA Podcast - The Case of the Vanished Scientists feat. Mike Rothschild (Premium E334) Sample

Episode Date: May 3, 2026

Are the nation’s top federal scientists being vanished to cover up earth-shattering revelations about aliens and advanced space technology? It’s a theory that President Trump, FBI Director Kash Patel, and the House Oversight Committee are at least pretending to take seriously. But what’s the truth behind the “dead or missing scientists” lists floating around social media for the last few months? Mike Rothschild joins us today to discuss the recent cases of scientists seemingly disappearing or dying under mysterious circumstances. Along the way we unpack the long tradition conspiracy theories that involve assembling lists of dead people and concluding they all have the same mysterious cause, including the “Curse of King Tut,” the Clinton body count, and little known GEC-Marconi scientist deaths conspiracy theory. Mike Rothschild on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/cw/MikeRothschild Mike Rothschild on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/rothschildmd.bsky.social Mike Rothschild on Twitter https://x.com/rothschildmd Federal Employees in the Physical Sciences and Engineering https://www.aip.org/statistics/federal-employees-in-the-physical-sciences-and-engineering Case Detail for Michael Hicks - LA County Medical Examiner https://me.lacounty.gov/case-detail/?caseNumber=2023-09733 Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Check out our new podcast series network Cursed Media! Spectral Voyager Season 2 is releasing now! Binge the entirety of Truly Tradly Deeply by Annie Kelly and Megan Kelly as well as Science in Transition by Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows: cursedmedia.net Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

You've found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast Premium Episode 334, the case of the vanished scientists, featuring Mike Rothschild. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Field, and Travis View. On April 14th, the Twitter account Autism Capital posed this question to its 1.2 million followers. Can anyone explain what the deal is with all the missing scientists lately? we've had like 10 disappearances in the last two years centered around nuclear weapons, fusion energy, advanced propulsion slash rocket materials, asteroid tracking, etc.

It seems like they're going missing from Los Alamos, NASA, JPL, MIT, Caltech, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. It seems to be mainly clustered around New Mexico. What's the deal? It's too much to be coincidence. It's a legitimate anomaly. It's spooky. What is the deal? Is it a legitimate anomaly?

Is it spooky? To help us figure out what's going on here, we're again joined by conspiracy theory researcher Mike Rothschild. He's written about this case for Turning Points Memo and for his Patreon. Mike, thanks again for joining us. Thank you guys. I wish we were joining under better circumstances,

but I can always say that. Yeah, they're calling our scientists, our finest minds in alien technology. Now, what really sort of baffles me is that it's not really a fringe concern, like even President Trump has fielded a question about this matter. What do you think is happening here?

And do you think that this is connected or totally random? Well, I hope it's random. But we're going to know in the next week and a half. I just left the meeting on that subject. So pretty serious stuff. But we're going to be now. Hopefully, I don't know, coincidence, whatever you want to call it.

But some of them were very important people. We're going to know in a week and a half. Yeah, week and a half, tops, we'll figure out where all these, we've got all these very important scientists slipping through the cracks. They're going circling the drain. We don't know how they're going and hopefully a coincidence. But by week's end, we're going to know where all of them are. It's like they're going to find like the alien nest where all of the scientists are kind of like strung up waiting for facehuggers to get them.

Yeah. In a week and a half. In a, yeah. It's going to take the team about a week and a half to get to space. Not two weeks. Not one week. I know. Very specific.

Yeah. Usually when Trump is bullshitting and he doesn't really have a answer to something, he'll say, oh, we're going to have that in two weeks. But he shortened his timeline. Maybe as he's getting older, he wants to run. Well, look, it's that desperate. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like you can't wait two weeks for Milanese's immigration report or the health care plan. Got to have it a week and a half.

That's true. Trump isn't the only official taking this seriously. The FBI has said that it's spearheading an effort to look for connections working with the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. FBI director Cash Patel, speaking to Fox News, even suggested that their investigation could end in arrests. We started this process last week. And then we're going to look for connections, like you said, on whether there are connections to classified access, access to classified information and or foreign actors. And then we will produce that information to the White House in the world because it's of such great public importance. And if there's any connections that lead to nefarious conduct or conspiracy, this FBI will make the appropriate arrest.

God, I really, every time I see him, it's kind of unsettling. Like, he inspires so little confidence. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know. If I were being told something about my local town among which, like, mysterious things had been occurring, like, everything is fine. Don't worry by this guy. I would immediately begin the Stephen King movie where I'm the protagonist. Yeah, in addition to that, like, every time he shows up on the news, it looks like the announcer just said, like,

and police are on the search for this man. And then, like, he always kind of looks like wild-eyed, like not sure why he should be there or like maybe be probably, should be somewhere else. It's like the personification of the record scratch meme. Yeah. You might be wondering how I got here. So am I. What's the deal?

Just like he looks like a police. Like he looks like he's just been flashed by like the police lineup camera. Yeah. I don't know. I've also seen a lot more life in his eyes in the past. You know, just right now he looks like, yeah, we're going to, we're looking to it. We're going to arrest them all. We're going to get them, whatever.

He just hates doing this media hit for some reason. Our elected representatives are also on the case. House Oversight Chairman James Comer has suggested that the culprit could be America's geopolitical rivals. All the usual suspects, China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, they're all, you know, on the suspect list, but there are a lot of, you know, Eastern European countries and other countries that could be involved as well, or it could be a coincidence. We're going to try to do everything we can to find out and report back to the American people. Or? Yeah. Or it's these other Eastern European country. Could be Latvia.

Belarus. I feel like this is the first time I've ever heard them say like, or it could be a coincidence. Like usually they're very sure about their theory. But with these scientists, it sounds like they're leaving the possibility open that like, nothing might be here. Maybe there was a reason they needed to go missing. Yeah. I mean, you can't see it obviously.

But the look on his face as he's talking about this, he just looks like he doesn't even understand what he's talking about or why he's talking about it. Yeah. I mean, like, I have a theory that, like, this administration, and like, even, like, said, even like, you know, the elected representatives are, like, are so thoroughly audience captured. Beyond barely attempting to serve the entrance of their constituents or anything like that. Like, they are so fearful that they're willing to, they feel the need to entertain every wild idea that becomes popular in social media. Yeah, because they know their voters do and they know that their donors do. So the main speculation around this case relates to a cluster of scientists, engineers,

defense-linked researchers and lab employees who have died or disappeared. To some, the circumstances of these deaths and disappearance are suspicious. Some even go further to say that these individuals were killed or snatched away because of what they allegedly knew about UFOs, exotic propulsion, nuclear secrets, aerospace programs, advanced energy, or classified government technology. Now, versions of the theory point to different culprits, perhaps U.S. black budget programs, foreign intelligence services, defense contractors, UFO secrecy, networks or some vague deep state operation.

The speculation has spun out in the wild directions, but the event that sparked theories about a wider plot is a genuine and ongoing mystery. That is the February 26th disappearance of retired Air Force Major General William Neal McHasland. General McCasland spearheaded Air Force research and has some past association with UFO UAP circles. The case inspired people to look for and connect older tragedies, including those related to the Jet Propulsion Lab figures, a Los Alamos employee, and an MIT fusion scientist.

So, I mean, this is, I think it's really the heart of it. I will go as we go into it. But my kind of theory, my kind of like take on this, is that there is one sort of like strange disappearance about a guy who seems to have just walked off without explanation. And then from that, people tried to find like similar cases, which don't quite rise to the level of mysteriousness of this case. Yeah, we got people looking for missing scientists.

What are you going to find in a world with, you know, however many billion people. Yeah, you have, and I'm sure we'll get into this, but you have people looking for a pattern in these things that are very, very tangentially related. And of course, in the world of conspiracy theories, any kind of relation, no matter how tangential is like proof that these people work together side by side

and they all had secrets. And I mean, we're just finding signal and noise at this point. Plus, missing scientists feels like a movie plot we've seen a couple times before, so it's very easy. Like, that's usually act one. It's like, the scientists have gone missing. You know, because the bad guys...

I'm going to tell you right now. I think it was the Umbrella Corporation. You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast. For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA. Travis, why is that such a good deal? Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA.

podcast for just $5 per month. For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes plus all of our miniseries. That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian the Nanny, 10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of the Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of trickle down with me, Travis View. It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting. Travis, for once, I agree with you.

And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to. Going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion. It's a fact. You're so right, Jake. We love and appreciate all of our listeners. Yes, we do. And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude, maybe?

That's not true. The part about be crying, not me being grateful. I'm very grateful.