Joe Rogan "genuinely concerned" about New Jersey, New York drone sightings

Joe Rogan is one of many people worried about the mysterious drones appearing over New York and New Jersey.

The podcast host took to X to share his thoughts on the drones, which have been spotted in recent weeks and triggered an FBI investigation. On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there was no need for concern, there was no evidence the drones were a threat to public safety and that there was "no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings."

But Rogan was not buying the explanation, describing it as "sus."

"I want to believe it's adderalled up incels holed up in a basement f****** with 'the man' more than I want it to be aliens. #iwanttobelieve," he added.

Rogan later shared another video from John Ferguson, who runs Saxon Unmanned, a Kansas-based government contractor that builds systems and vehicles such as drones.

In the video, Ferguson said he believed there was nothing "nefarious" about the drones, but guessed they were designed to detect a "gas leak" or "radioactive material."

"The only reason why you would ever fly an unmanned aircraft at night is if you're looking for something," he said.

"So my belief is they're trying to smell something on the ground – gas leak, radioactive material, whatever," he said of his unverified claim, and admitted what he was saying was unfounded, but pointed to his professional experience in the field as evidence he had some authority on the subject.

"So if you think it's bulls***, whatever, that's cool. I don't want to spread misinformation, as we know that there's a lot of that going around," Ferguson said.

Above Ferguson's video that he had shared, Rogan wrote: "This is the first video about these drones that has got me genuinely concerned."

Newsweek contacted Rogan by email on Monday morning for additional comment.

During a media conference on Sunday, Mayorkas suggested that a rule change by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in September of 2023 "may be one of the reasons" for the reports of drone sightings at night in the northeast of the country.

"In September of 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, changed the rules so that drones could fly at night," he told ABC News' This Week on Sunday. "And that may be one of the reasons why now people are seeing more drones than they did before, especially from dawn to dusk."

"I want to assure the American public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings," he said in the interview.