The people rewriting humanity’s first-contact manual are no longer treating it as a theoretical exercise. For more than three decades, the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Committee has issued voluntary guidelines for what to do if scientists detect evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. But this year, as delegates prepare to present a final revised Declaration of Principles at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney, the tone of their work feels different. The revisions are not just bureaucratic housekeeping. They read like a quiet acknowledgment that the era of pure speculation might be closing.

The original 1989 Declaration of Principles was written when the internet was young and “technosignature” meant radio static. It told astronomers how to verify signals and notify the United Nations, but it assumed a world of slow communication and a few national observatories. The new draft, titled Declaration of Principles Concerning the Conduct of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) – 2026 Update, reads like a manual written for a connected and volatile planet. It includes protocols for social media, data leaks, researcher safety, and even the ethical use of artificial intelligence during verification. The revisions were guided by a task group established in 2022 and refined through a multi-year consultation with hundreds of scientists, ethicists, lawyers, and policy experts.

In the committee’s own words, these are not just rules for discovery but “guidance to the scientific community for the announcement of a confirmed SETI detection which balances the community imperative of providing timely and accurate information to a wide-ranging audience, with appropriate consideration for the safety and exposure of individual scientists involved.” That last phrase, safety and exposure, did not appear in 1989 or 2010. It hints at a world in which discovery is as much a communications crisis as a scientific event.