The White House Is Amplifying Fake Accounts of ‘Sonic Weapons’ in Venezuela

Among the various things that the two Donald Trump administrations have eroded from American society: The expectation that high-ranking officials in said administration would employ their social media presence with some kind of regard for the fact that they’re functioning as official mouthpieces of the federal government. There was once a time when the White House Press Secretary retweeting accounts of the novel deployment of high-tech weaponry against human targets would have been global news, but what goes unsaid is that in this previous timeline, the press secretary would have been citing an actual source, with a real story to share, rather than a piece of propaganda that has clearly been manufactured for an obvious purpose. The U.S. mainstream media, meanwhile, has long since made its peace with amplifying fake messages as long as they get to revel in the salacious content of a good, fake story, for clicks. And that’s how we end up with major media sources reporting over the weekend that the United States was using devastating “sonic weapons” in its recent ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, despite the fact that the entire story comes back to Karoline Leavitt retweeting a single, clearly fake account.

You can see why the likes of the shock-chasing Daily Mail or New York Post were unable to resist, what with phrases like “my head was exploding from the inside” and “some were vomiting blood” to be parroted back. Fox News also got on the bandwagon, wedging the word “claimed” into their headline to afford them the tiniest bit of wiggle room on their reporting. Of course, Fox almost certainly knew that what it was writing up was bullshit, but they did it anyway because they’re sympathetic to the original piece of propaganda’s intent: Making the U.S. military look as scary and competent as possible, in an effort to intimidate both dissidents and others in Latin America. How do we know that? Well, does THIS not make the game a little obvious?

This text is culled from the original source of the sonic weapon claims, which was a Twitter post from GOP political operative/influencer Mike Netter. In said post, Netter purports to share the account “from a Venezuelan security guard loyal to Nicolás Maduro,” without bothering to mention who the person being interviewed is, or who the supposed “interviewer” is who was speaking to him. It should go without saying that there’s no video or audio. The rest of the post just bounces back and forth between “security guard” and “interviewer” as the guard talks about American hyper-machismo and competence, with such highlights as “We were hundreds, but we had no chance, they were shooting with such precision and speed.” Then comes the main event, the sonic weapon talk:

Beyond the fact that this could hardly sound less like the words of a Venezuelan security guard, and the fact that were indeed multiple “casualties” (which include injuries) on the U.S. side, Netter’s intent to provide a piece of morale-boosting propaganda for the American right, and a viral threat aimed at Latin America, could hardly be more obvious. It’s a piece of “Wunderwaffe” glazing right out of the Joseph Goebbels playbook. He might as well have included a few more lines where the security guard details how handsome and irresistible the American soldiers were, and how the wives of all the slain Venezuelan commandos were throwing themselves at them. It’s such a clumsy piece of propaganda, from such an obviously untrustworthy source–who in the last 24 hours shared an AI video of Iranian crowds begging for “freedom” and U.S. military intervention–that it presumably wouldn’t have gone anywhere, except for Karoline Leavitt of all people stepping in to give the story a whitewash of legitimacy through the simple act of a retweet. That she did, tweeting “stop what you are doing and read this…,” in reference to Mike Netter’s original post.

Note the open-ended vagueness of how she chose to do it, not explicitly saying “Here’s a real thing that happened in Venezuela,” which would put her on the record (as if this even matters at this point). But Leavitt’s choice is still significant–it speaks to a calculated decision that was made to boost a fake account, because the fake story served a purpose that was in line with the aims of the White House. Because the Trump administration wants to sow fear and respect through Latin America, and impress his base, the lesson here is that even the likes of the White House Press Secretary have carte blanche to retweet the lies of random political influencers if they in any way serve that purpose. And this, naturally, just gives more incentive to influencers to come up with even more colorful lies, as they may be rewarded with retweets from members of the administration, helping to build their social audience. Don’t put it past the online left to amplify these stories, either: They may know full well that the account creating the story is BS, but they’ll retweet it too if they think it can be useful to their own anti-government spin.

The White House Press Secretary either disclosed a new (and presumably highly classified) sonic weapon on Twitter. Or she’s promoting some conspiracy bullshit.

I have my suspicions which is true.

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— Noah Shachtman (@noahshachtman.bsky.social) Jan 10, 2026 at 5:35 PM

The irony here is that the types of weapons referenced by Netter’s post very well may actually exist. At the very least, we know quite well that sonic weapons have been employed by other regimes, although it’s questionable whether any of them can summon up such colorful effects as “vomiting blood,” which feels 100% like Netter realizing what would help to sell a juicy story. Real-life sonic weapons are part of a vast constellation of high-tech experimentation into both conventional weaponry and crowd-dispersal technology, which can include highly targeted and disorienting sound, the ever-vague “directed-energy weapons,” or even a non-lethal “pain ray” that science sites were writing about the U.S. military testing more than a decade ago. Who knows what we’ve actually got at our disposal at this point? Weaponry we don’t fully understand has even been employed against Americans abroad, as in the still-confounding Havana Syndrome cases.

When such technology does get employed, however, you’re not going to be finding out about it in a Twitter post from “Mike Netter,” where an unnamed “interviewer” says things like “So, do you think the rest of the region should think twice before confronting the Americans?” As for the members of the media who went along with the obvious ruse, I’d say they deserve shame, if only there were any expectations left for them to fail. When they’ve already long since given up on on legitimate reporting, we can only nod and go about our day.