Tom DeLonge

Tom DeLonge is the guitarist and co-founder of the rock band Blink-182 and the founder of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, the private venture that assembled former defense and intelligence officials in 2017 and catalyzed the modern disclosure era.

DeLonge's UFO obsession was band lore for decades before he left Blink-182 in 2015 to pursue it. Emails released in the 2016 WikiLeaks Podesta files showed him corresponding with senior officials, including a former undersecretary-level Pentagon figure, about advising his project, foreshadowing what came next.

In October 2017 he launched To The Stars Academy with Luis Elizondo, Christopher Mellon, Hal Puthoff, Jim Semivan, and Steve Justice among its principals. Days later Elizondo's resignation and the company's release of the FLIR1 and Gimbal videos coincided with the New York Times AATIP story. TTSA's History channel series Unidentified (2019-2020) carried the story to television, and its ADAM materials-analysis project collected alleged exotic metamaterials. DeLonge's Sekret Machines book series, co-written with A.J. Hartley, and his stated briefings from "advisors" fed the era's mythology.

DeLonge has claimed deep-program contacts told him pieces of a hidden history involving recovered technology and an ancient adversarial presence, claims he presents in a deliberately fictionalized wrapper. His documented contribution is organizational: he assembled the credentialed team whose defections from government made 2017 happen.

Skeptics mock the mythology and note TTSA's finances leaned on crowdfunded shares while delivering entertainment rather than science; the company refocused on media in 2021 as officials departed. Even critics concede the catalytic role. Supporters argue history will remember he was right that insiders wanted out.

DeLonge rejoined Blink-182 while maintaining To The Stars as a media company, and remains a symbolic founder figure to the disclosure movement.