With Donald Trump both ready to disclose a raft of UFO files and threatening to embargo Spain (an outcome nobody had on their geopolitical bingo card for 2026), we felt there could be no more appropriate moment to convene once again for a fine-dining experience built around Spanish culinary consumption, while discussing defense technology, classified science, and — inevitably — aliens.
For this instalment, we are delighted to welcome author and journalist Nick Cook, who will join the Blind Spot’s resident unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) expert (and Spaniard) Dario Garcia Giner for a conversation ranging from stealth military technology and zero-gravity research to the ever-expanding universe of UAP lore and its potential disclosure.
Cook is a former aerospace and defense journalist, as the aerospace editor at Jane’s Defence Weekly, the world’s most sober chroniclers of global military technology and intelligence.
Over the course of his career, he has covered everything from stealth aircraft to classified propulsion research — and eventually found himself investigating a topic that polite defense journalism once avoided entirely: so-called anti-gravity propulsion.
This fascinating investigation resulted in his book, The Hunt for Zero Point — essential reading for serious individuals interested in this topic.
Meanwhile, Miguel remains strategically pre-positioned to supply the evening with a three-course menu of soon-to-be-contraband Spanish delicacies, loosely themed around unidentified anomalous phenomena and zero-gravity physics.
(Gravity will, unfortunately, remain operational for the duration of the meal.)
The bad news is that attendance is strictly limited to 30 guests.
So please move with the urgency of a ballistic missile crossing the Strait of Hormuz if you wish to avoid disappointment.
The coordinates:
Rayuela restaurant, Dicken’s Yard Ealing
The date:
March 25
The time:
19:00
Fellow conspirators:
Izzy
Price:
£110
The Menu:
Tickets available here.
(December’s event was priced at £95, which allowed us to break even. However, between the looming Spanish embargo, Julio Iglesias’ recent fall from grace, and rising insurance costs associated with jamón trafficking, a modest premium has proven unavoidable.)
As part of the evening, all participants will receive a copy of Nick Cook’s signature book, The Hunt for Zero Point.
The journalism bit:
The Blind Spot last chatted with Nick Cook on February 1, 2022, just before Russia decided to invade Ukraine. Is that auspicious? Possibly.
In the interview, Cook described how his career — spent investigating advanced weapons systems, classified aerospace programs, and Cold War military technology — eventually led him into an area that was long considered taboo in serious defense reporting: anti-gravity research and the possibility that some unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) might relate to highly classified human technology.
While working within the defense establishment’s information ecosystem — Pentagon officials, defense contractors, intelligence sources — Cook became aware of obscure research into gravity manipulation and advanced propulsion. This investigation culminated in his 2001 book The Hunt for Zero Point, where he explored historical and contemporary attempts to develop propulsion systems that could theoretically replicate the performance associated with UFO sightings.
Since then, Cook has repeatedly argued that although anti-gravity remains unproven in public science, serious scientists are exploring it, including NASA-affiliated physicist Ning Li, who experimented with rotating superconductors that appeared to produce small reductions in weight above the apparatus.
Li later disappeared from public view after securing a U.S. Army contract, which fuelled speculation that her work had been absorbed into classified military research.
Tracing the lineage of these ideas further back, Cook has also investigated claims about advanced Nazi weapons programs late in World War II, focusing on SS general Hans Kammler, who oversaw underground facilities producing secret technologies.
He has also examined rumors of anti-gravity experiments in underground complexes such as the Riese project in Poland but later concluded that many of these installations were more likely connected to clandestine nuclear research and isotope-separation experiments.
His broader point is that wartime secrecy, followed by the Allied scramble to capture German scientists and technology through programs such as Operation Paperclip, created a legacy of compartmentalised knowledge and cover-ups that still shapes how advanced aerospace research is discussed today.
Why now? Cook’s perspective resonates with the current policy debate around UAP transparency.
Through February and March 2026, the issue has returned to the news agenda amid renewed congressional scrutiny of classified aerospace programs, continuing Pentagon reporting requirements on unexplained aerial encounters, and growing calls for scientific study of anomalous data collected by military sensors.
Cook’s central thesis — that decades of compartmentalised secrecy around advanced defense research may obscure both experimental technologies and genuinely unexplained phenomena — places his work at the intersection of today’s disclosure politics, defense oversight, and the broader question of how governments investigate anomalies at the edge of known physics.
If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, we don’t know what will!
