Deadly wildfires fueled by hot, dry, and windy weather conditions devastated parts of the Hawaiian island of Maui in early August 2023, killing at least 53 people, as of this writing, and causing widespread damage in the historic town of Lahaina. As dramatic first-person accounts and photographs of the conflagration spread on social media, so did rumors and conspiracy theories about what caused it.

Borrowing a conspiracist trope that first emerged during the 2020-21 California wildfires, a number of accounts on the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), as well as Instagram and Facebook, posited that the fires must have been started by a so-called "direct energy weapon" (aka "directed energy weapon" in official parlance):

The photo above, mislabeled as showing a "direct energy weapon," is actually of an oil refinery fire that took place in January 2018. (@/RushLives2112/Twitter)