Psionics is an umbrella term for claimed abilities in which the mind acquires information or affects matter without a recognized sensory or physical pathway. It commonly includes telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and Remote Viewing. The word developed in science-fiction and paranormal communities and is not a standard scientific category. Different claims grouped under it require different tests and should not be treated as one demonstrated faculty.

Government interest is documented, especially during the Cold War. U.S. agencies funded laboratory and operational work on remote viewing and related anomalous cognition, later assembled under the Stargate label. Declassified records include experiments, session transcripts, internal debates, and evaluations. They show that officials investigated possible intelligence applications; they do not establish that every proposed phenomenon worked or that “psionic” personnel became a reliable operational capability.

The 1995 independent review illustrates the dispute. Jessica Utts judged portions of the experimental record statistically anomalous, while Ray Hyman argued that methodological weaknesses and lack of dependable replication prevented a paranormal conclusion. The operational assessment found the products too vague and inconsistent to be useful without other information, and CIA declined to continue the program. Psychokinesis and telepathy claims face their own problems of controls, fraud prevention, sensory leakage, selective reporting, and replication.

In contemporary UAP narratives, psionics may be invoked to explain contact, craft control, altered states, or unusual experiences associated with Consciousness & Psi. Those interpretations go beyond the established documentary record. The careful use of the term identifies a family of reported experiences and historical research programs while keeping three questions separate: whether an experience occurred, whether a measurable anomaly survives controls, and whether any nonordinary mechanism has been demonstrated.