CLAIM: A video of a laser beam starting an explosion at a gas station in Russia is an example of a directed-energy weapon in action.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. A 9-year-old video was altered to add the laser beam. An unedited version of the same footage can be seen in news reports from 2014 about an explosion at a gas station in Makhachkala, a southwestern Russian city on the Caspian Sea. Lasers powerful enough to start such a fire could not be seen by the naked eye, as they use infrared technology, an aerospace engineering expert told The Associated Press.
THE FACTS: In the aftermath of the deadly Maui wildfires, social media users have shared altered and miscaptioned images, falsely claiming they prove a baseless conspiracy theory that the fires were started by a directed-energy weapon. As these posts circulated, a video shared on Instagram claimed to show such a weapon being used.
The video shows what appears to be a red laser beam shooting down from the sky and starting a fire in front of a gas station, which explodes seconds later. Captions on the video read, “LASER BEAM WEAPON” and “RED LASER BEAM ATTACK?”
One post that shared the video wrote: “This is how it looks to see DEWs in action.”
“DEW” stands for directed-energy weapon. This technology uses “concentrated electromagnetic energy,” according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. That includes “high energy lasers and other high power electromagnetics.”
But the laser beam in the video being shared online was edited into the footage. It does not appear in an unedited version posted on YouTube in August 2014 by Russian media outlet RIA Dagestan. The fire and resulting explosion, however, do materialize.
The outlet reported that the incident occurred on Aug. 8, 2014, in Makhachkala, a southwestern Russian city that sits beside the Caspian Sea in the country’s Republic of Dagestan.
The AP independently confirmed that the incident took place in Makhachkala by using Google Maps to identify two landmarks that appeared in the video posted by RIA Dagestana — a large billboard on the side of a building and another building with a distinctive blue roof. As of August 2019, the latest available images on Google Maps show that another gas station replaced the one that exploded.
Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told the AP that he does not believe the edited video shows “any kind of laser” and that the impact of a directed-energy weapon wouldn’t actually appear as a visible laser beam.
“Modern lasers with power that is high enough to start any kind of fire operate in the infrared and so cannot be seen by the naked eye,” he said.
The Maui wildfires are the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century, responsible for a death toll of at least 96. Officials have not yet determined the cause of the fires, which were fueled by dry weather and the winds of a nearby hurricane.
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Associated Press writer Philip Marcelo in New York contributed to this report.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
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