Climate change-denying social media accounts are exploiting the deadly wildfires in Hawaii to push conspiracy theories that high-energy lasers were used to spark the flames.
Posts invoking such technologies or claiming the blazes were set intentionally to create climate-friendly cities have generated millions of engagements on platforms such as X.
“Only a Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) can cause this kind of destruction,” far-right radio host Stew Peters said in one post on the site, formerly known as Twitter.
Photo: AFP
The narrative’s surge highlights what disinformation experts say is a trend in which conspiracy theorists deny the science of climate change in response to extreme weather events.
“Any time there is a climate-related event and advocates call for accelerated climate action, there usually is a corresponding attempt to discredit climate science, disconnect the event from climate change and blame it on something else,” said Arunima Krishna, a Boston University professor who studies climate disinformation. “In this case, directed energy weapons.”
X and other sites are littered with posts falsely claiming to show photos and videos of Hawaii being targeted by such systems, which use concentrated electromagnetic energy and are being developed in the US for drone and missile defense.
However, the visuals spreading online are unrelated to the fires that killed at least 111 people and leveled the seaside town of Lahaina on Maui.
Fact-checkers have debunked posts that misrepresent shots of a SpaceX rocket launch in California, a flare at an Ohio oil refinery, power lines sparking in Louisiana, a Chinese satellite and a transformer exploding in Chile, among other outdated images circulating in multiple languages.
Some posts shared a photo that was doctored to add a beam of light to the sky, while others claimed natural phenomena — such as the fires’ failure to burn some trees — were evidence of lasers.
“The theory is especially adaptable to social media because it fits with pictures taken of fires that show beams of light supposedly coming from space,” said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory expert and author of the book Jewish Space Lasers. “It works on the lack of basic understanding that conspiracy believers have of how fire and wind work.”
Iain Boyd, an expert on directed energy weapons at the University of Colorado, said the conspiracy theory defies reality in part because a laser with enough power to spark the Hawaii blazes would require an “enormous” air or spacecraft that could not go unnoticed.
Authorities are still probing what started the inferno, but the US National Weather Service issued warnings about dangerous fire conditions as a hurricane brought strong winds to an area with dry vegetation. US media have cited fallen power lines as a possible source.
“With winds this severe and a large amount of dry grass surrounding the community, there is no need for an ignition from ‘space,’” said Michael Gollner, who researches fire dynamics at the University of California-Berkeley. “Obviously these are really crazy allegations.”
Jennie King, head of climate research and policy at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said wildfire disinformation has evolved over the years.
In a 2018 Facebook post, US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested a beam shot from space could have caused blazes that year in California.
Most of the disinformation King observed around global wildfires in 2019 sought to blame arsonists rather than climate change. More recent claims about the government using lasers to usher in climate-friendly cities advance the same central idea that global warming is insignificant, King said — but they also invoke a broader worldview harbored by supporters of QAnon and other conspiracy theories.
“They fit into this conspiratorial universe around a globalist cabal, a New World Order or a shadowy group of elites that are trying to implement their agenda,” King said.
The dramatic, out-of-context visuals shared online capitalize on these fears, Rothschild said. “It’s easy to use those pictures as ‘proof’ of what ‘they’ are doing to us to further their climate change agenda or societal control, and people desperate for answers would rather believe in space weapons than the reality of the climate crisis.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to