TikTok laser video falsely linked to Texas wildfires

"Mysterious green laser captured on video during 'storm' purportedly from the state of Texas," says a March 2, 2024 post linking the state's wildfires to the clip, which shows a green beam of light shooting toward the ground and illuminating the sky.

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Screenshot from X taken March 4, 2024

The post from conservative commentator Chuck Callesto is one of several on X from accounts that have previously spread disinformation. The same video also circulated on other platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, where multiple posts claimed it showed a directed energy weapon aimed at Texas.

The claims blaming such weapons -- which use concentrated electromagnetic energy and are being developed in the United States for drone and missile defense -- come as authorities in Texas struggle to contain the Smokehouse Creek Fire and other blazes that have killed at least two people and swelled to cover more than a million acres in the flat, northern region known as the panhandle.

The causes of the wildfires remained under investigation as of March 5, though attorneys in the US border state have zeroed in on an energy company's downed power line, according to the Texas Tribune.

The Texas A&M Forest Service previously told AFP there was no indication that directed energy weapons were involved.

The video of a green ray of light is also unrelated to the wildfires, which started February 26 and were fueled by a combination of harsh winds, dry conditions and warm temperatures, according to the National Weather Service.

Reverse image and keyword searches revealed the clip was posted to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook on December 31, 2023, long before the fires (archived here, here and here).

The video comes from Antonio Williams, who describes himself as a "video creator" and goes by the handle "incognitogamingtv" on TikTok.

The caption says the video shows a "green laser beam" moving across the sky during a thunderstorm, but adds that it is "for educational purposes only."

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Screenshot from TikTok taken March 4, 2024

AFP could not verify where the buildings seen in the footage are located, but the green light and associated sound effects appear to show signs of digital editing. At approximately the 1-minute mark, for example, the green beam flashes across the screen, but a truck driving in the street is not moving.

In separate posts AFP reviewed, the same creator has posted other apparently edited videos purporting to show a massive "river monster" swimming under a bridge, a UFO hovering above the ground, a dragon trailing an airplane, a woman getting sucked into the sky, an asteroid crashing into the moon, a human-like figure walking in the clouds, blasts of light fired from the sky and other supernatural phenomena.

AFP contacted Williams for comment, but no response was forthcoming -- and Williams appeared to block this AFP journalist on TikTok after the outreach.

Iain Boyd, director of the University of Colorado's Center for National Security Initiatives and an expert on directed energy weapons, told AFP that while a high-energy laser fired at vegetation could in theory start a fire, those developed by the military require a tremendous amount of power and an aircraft carrier too large to go unnoticed.

They would not be green like the beam in the video, either.

"Those lasers produce beams in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, they are not green, and they cannot be seen with the human eye," he said.

AFP previously debunked similar conspiracy theories about an inferno that burned through the Hawaiian island of Maui in August, including here, here, here, here, here and here.