Politicians and right-wing influencers have spread conspiracy theories online suggesting that Hurricane Milton has been geoengineered by nefarious forces, with the end goal of preventing Republicans from voting in the presidential election.
“Milton looks like another man-made storm, and it looks like Trump voters are victims. Is this really what’s happening?” wrote one user on X. “Biden and Harris are messing with the weather! Hurricane Milton was sent to Florida just like the other hurricane to wipe Florida out!! They know those are mostly Trump supporters who live in that state, so 85% of them won’t be able to vote next month,” wrote another.
“They want to kill Trump supporters and interfere with the election,” another user declared.
The “weather weapon” theory and others began proliferating when Hurricane Helene made landfall nearly two weeks ago, leaving at least 230 dead. And now, some of these wild narratives are not only reverberating on fringe corners of the internet but also are being spread by major accounts—chief among them, GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
Greene, after spending years trying to distance herself from her infamous 2018 remarks on social media blaming wildfires on “Jewish Space Lasers,” is now using this climate emergency to double down on weather conspiracies and lasers.
While Greene stopped short of blaming Jews for the hurricanes, she has promoted conspiracies that have a history of being steeped in antisemitism. “Yes they can control the weather,” Greene wrote on X on October 3 about the hurricanes, without specifying who “they” are. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
The conspiracy theory that Jews, specifically the Rothschild family, can manipulate world events, including climate and weather events, to their favor, is rooted in centuries of antisemitic scapegoating. The weather conspiracies in particular ramped up significantly after 2011, when a member of the Rothschild family acquired a controlling stake in Weather Central, a company that provides weather data to media companies.
Greene later surfaced a 11-year-old CBS News clip featuring futurist and physicist Michio Kaku discussing experimental lab research into weather modification using lasers. “Lasers,” Greene wrote. “CBS, 9 years ago, talked about lasers controlling the weather.” Right-wing blog The Gateway Pundit, which is known for trafficking in conspiracy theories, gave Greene a major boost on Tuesday with the headline “Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Weather Manipulation Claims Backed by Science—Must Read Deep Dive into History of Weather Manipulation—Shocking Facts Revealed!”
Attempts to politicize Hurricane Milton—which is expected to be a deadly event when it makes landfall Wednesday—are serving as a distraction from dire warnings by local officials. “I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever,” Tampa mayor Jane Castor said on CNN Monday night. “If you choose to stay in those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”
On Monday, amid desperate evacuation warnings, Greene unleashed a hot new take. “Climate change is the new Covid,” she wrote. “Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled. Did you ever give permission to them to do it? Are you paying for it? Of course you are.”
Other recent conspiracy theories that have dominated social media have been directed toward the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a long-standing target of anti-government narratives. Some have falsely claimed that the agency was intentionally withholding relief to punish Trump-supporting enclaves or that the organization had spent all its money on the border and foreign wars.
Those conspiracy theories, parroted by Donald Trump and other high-profile Republicans, have muddied the zone and hampered relief efforts. “The GREAT people of North Carolina are being stood up by Harris and Biden, who are giving almost all of the FEMA money to Illegal Migrants,” Trump wrote in one of many posts shared to Truth Social.
Over the weekend, the White House put out a memo titled “Fighting Hurricane Helene Falsehoods With Facts,” debunking some dominant narratives about FEMA’s relief efforts—stating that, for example, no money had been diverted from disaster response needs toward the border.
“Disinformation of this kind can discourage people from seeking critical assistance when they need it most,” the memo said. "It is paramount that every leader, whatever their political beliefs, stops spreading this poison."
This hasn’t stopped other accounts online from weighing in. Private equity manager Grant Cardone, who holds a yellow-ticked “verified organization” account on X, claimed that he’d never seen a hurricane follow a path like the one Milton was on. (Readers added context, noting that while it’s an uncommon track, it has been seen at least six times in the Gulf of Mexico since 1851). “Do you think Gov’t is using technology to manipulate weather patterns & storms?” Cardone asked in a post that’s been viewed over 5 million times.
“Cloud seeding or manipulating the weather is real,” wrote a user on X in a post that’s been viewed 180,000 times. “Kills Americans, catastrophic events JUST BEFORE AN ELECTION. Voting becomes impossible for many. October surprise??”
Experts tell WIRED that there is absolutely no truth to any of these claims that the hurricanes could be engineered by scientists.
Joshua Horton, a senior program fellow studying solar geoengineering at Harvard University, says he has worked in the field of geoengineering for 15 years and had never once encountered lasers being used. Horton noted that in the 1960s, there were attempts to use weather modification to steer hurricanes away from coasts. In perhaps 30 years, he says, solar engineering research may have advanced to the point where scientists could know how to reduce the severity of hurricanes. One theory that’s being explored is whether shooting seaspray into low-lying marine clouds to make them more reflective over areas in the ocean where it gets very hot could potentially reduce the severity of hurricanes. But at this stage, that’s still “totally speculative,” says Horton.
“Scientists cannot control the weather in the ways that MTG is claiming,” says Leah Aronowsky, an assistant professor of climate at Columbia University’s Climate School.
Aronowsky says that the field of geoengineering, which involves intervening in Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and soils to mitigate the effects of climate change, is controversial and worthy of some “real conversations.” But it’s also a field frequently targeted by conspiracy theorists, who envision nefarious actors using emerging complex technology for political means.
Many online conspiracy theorists have zeroed in on the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, known as HAARP, which researches the ionosphere, as the brains behind Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Google Trends shows a sharp uptick in searches for HAARP over the past two weeks.
“Why are record-breaking hurricanes happening back-to-back,” asked one X user in a post that garnered 53,000 views. “Why do they target the regions that resisted lockdowns and vaccines? And why are they mysteriously forming deep within the Caribbean? Shall we talk about HAARP?”
"Do these clouds look natural to you?” reads a post from Alux Jownes Team, a cryptocurrency token based on a Solana blockchain that holds a yellow-ticked “verified organization” account on X. The post garnered nearly 790,000 views.
“Hurricane Milton Harris is what geo engineering looks like,” it continued. “Look up HAARP … They’re using fucking weather weapons on us."
HAARP was initially jointly funded by the US military and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Since 2015, it’s been run and funded solely by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
HAARP did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment, but as an FAQ section on its site indicates, it has faced similar conspiracy theories in the past. (Earlier this year, Trump ally Laura Loomer suggested that then-Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley and her deep state allies had deployed HAARP to disturb the Iowa caucus.) Among the frequently asked questions are, “Can HAARP exert mind control over people?” (answer: no) and “Can HAARP control or manipulate the weather?” (also no).
“This is all really dangerous, that this is all swirling around at the same time,” says Aronowsky, who is concerned about the effect of further undermining public trust in science, particularly at a moment of national emergency. “It really serves as a dangerous diversionary tactic and starts to make the conversation about political blame rather than the humanitarian crisis that the US is currently facing.”
10/10/2024: This article has been updated to note that the CBS News clip referenced by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is from 11 years ago.
