Bulwark Takes - Right-Wing Militia’s Wild Plot to Destroy the Weather System

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Andrew Egger and Will Sommer discuss the right-wing militia conspiracy group threatening federal weather radar sites, believing they're being used to control the weather.

America's energy future begins now. More American oil and natural gas means more jobs, more security, and more innovation. America's moment is now. Learn more at lightsonenergy.org. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. Hi guys, this is Andrew Egger with The Bulwark. Even when times are relatively peaceful and everything's pretty much normal, you never really want to see headlines about militia groups targeting different parts of federal infrastructure. Unfortunately, that's exactly the kind of headline that we're getting to discuss today. Here's CNN.

A militarized conspiracy theorist group believes radars are weather weapons and is trying to destroy them. So here's the lead. National Weather Service offices around the country are on guard after recent threats to agency infrastructure, specifically Doppler weather radars from a violent militia-style group, emails from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's security office show. Here to talk about all that with me is our correspondent for all things wild and crazy and far out on the right, Will Sommer. Will, what do you make of all this stuff? What's going on in the weather world? Yeah, so, you know, it's a very strange situation. I mean, this is a group I've been following for a while called Veterans on Patrol.

It's run by a guy named Louis Arthur, who I do want to underline is not himself a veteran. And these guys get into sort of conspiracy theories, scrapes across the country. They issue threats. In this case, they've been certainly Louis Arthur has been in trouble with the law. You know, I've been following this group for seven years now. And in this case, the NWS here is warning its employees that Lewis Arthur and his group have threatened to blow up specifically radar sites that are used for weather prediction. They're also used by the military, these NEXRAD sites across the country. And you might say, what's his beef with the weather, right? Well, as it turns out, he believes that these devices are being used to control the weather.

And in particular, they were used in Hurricane Helene in North Carolina to sort of control that and to drive people off of mineral rich land. They've been playing God with the weather too long. They murdered my families in Western North Carolina. We just did four and a half months disaster out there immediately after Helene hit the Oklahoma Nexrad Towers. We released the data. Your Nexrad Towers in your state was on the furthest Western grid. Radar operation commands at Oklahoma University oversaw steering Helene up into Western North Carolina. That was a weather weapon. That was a United States military playing

God with the weather. And this weekend, we're going to go destroy their weapons. And this created a previous saga for his group where they kind of got in a fight with locals in North Carolina over control of aid to that area. So this is what we're dealing with. And it's not great. Yeah. I never know when we, when you bump into these stories, a local militia group, obviously these are very distributed organizations. Um, they all have their own little idiosyncrasies and their own specific concerns and things like that. At the same time, you know, I think we all tend to lump them into, you know, at least the sort of like federated network of militias, right? This, this notion that there's this kind of growing movement of people, you know, joining these potentially violent organizations. How do you place these guys kind of in the broad sweep of what we think of as kind of right-wing militias in America writ

large? Yeah, well, this is really sort of a 21st century militia situation. I mean, this isn't like the militias of the 90s. I mean, Lewis Arthur is very plugged into social media. He has a huge social media following. And in part, he's built that up through getting into these controversies and conspiracy theories. Back in 2018, he was sort of a local in Arizona, locally notorious figure, up until he discovered some bones on a highway in the desert. And he said, this is a QAnon style child trafficking site. And this became a huge deal in the QAnon world. And all these people flocked there and he was traveling through the desert and he'd find like a bag of garbage and

he'd say, these are the, what the traffickers are using and what have you. He like occupied a cement plant. It was a whole thing. So anyways, he did some time over that. Now he's back. He went to North Carolina, as I mentioned, I think he tried to sort of take up residence in some town plan. It was a whole thing. So anyways, he did some time over that. Now he's back. He went to North Carolina, as I mentioned. I think he tried to sort of take up residence in some town in Washington State that was supposedly involved in child trafficking, according to him. I want your forgiveness for what I'm going to do in your city and to your homes, because we're going to bring the problem to your homes now. Now I'm bringing the problem to your doors. Thank you, sir.

And he has some amount of followers. I think he has a lot of fans online and he has maybe a dozen, maybe 20 people that kind of come in and out of his operation in the real world. So in this case, though, he's really escalated these threats to the radar sites. He keeps saying, you know, I'm on my way to blow up some radar sites in Oklahoma in particular. Just on his telegram, he posted a video of someone who he claims is a federal agent who is saying, yeah, so pretty much I would say stop threatening the radar sites. That's a big issue for us. You know, when you talk about blowing up military infrastructure, there's going to be a prosecution if you do that. And he's saying, sorry, I got to do it. I didn't come here to destroy anything but the lies that keep you comfortable.

Your people here will suffer the next time they act. Those next rat towers aren't what you think. Stop, stop, stop. See, when you start talking about suffrage and all this other, it becomes a rhetoric of kind of aggression. And right now I'm feeling like you're being aggressive. Aggressive because I want to help you. And I haven't done anything to you.

I want to help you. I want to help your family. I want you to help you by just stop doing the threats. Okay. You want to help people? Great. You want to help build and rebuild and they want your help. That's great. You want to do relief supplies. That's fantastic. That's amazing. I absolutely applaud you for that. All I want you to do is stop making any of these threats. That's it. That's it. Just stop making the threats. Would you do that? I'll tell them to stop making threats to me. I mean, it's just kind of a mind boggling story. Am I correct? I think I have this right that all of this is currently in the realm of threats and posturing and posting, right?

Has he actually shown up at any of these sites? Much less damage that we know of? Well, they've certainly shown up on his Telegram site. There are he's urging people across his in his network. He's saying, OK, if there's a next rat site in this town, someone needs to go check it out. I was just checking his Telegram account and they're posting like they're doing what they're calling like dry runs to to prepare to attack these sites. I mean, it is like they are treating it very seriously. And it's so bizarre. You almost have to assume with these things you say, oh, this has to be fake, this has to be there has to be some backing down here. But I think there doesn't really seem to be and this is a guy who is, I think, very kind of possessed of himself and his own conspiracy theory beliefs. And ultimately, you know, this does go back to

the idea that they believe this controls the weather. We think about Marjorie Taylor Greene, who also believed, you know, the government was controlling the weather. You know, RFK Jr. just made a reference to chemtrails being used to control the weather. It's done, we think, by DARPA. And a lot of it now is coming out of the jet fuel. Those materials are put in jet fuel. I'm going to do everything in my power to stop it. We're bringing on somebody who's going to think only

about that, find out who's doing it and holding them accountable. So this is an idea we're seeing more and more. Yeah. And I guess I kind of have to just wonder where is kind of federal law enforcement in all of this. I mean, it would seem to me that it's very likely the case that it is not only illegal to blow up military infrastructure, but you can only do a, maybe there's a maybe there's a three strikes type rule. You can only do a certain amount of threatening to do that in public, online, before you get a knock at your door. I mean, have we seen any kind of response from the boys in blue about all this? Well, so he posted this video today of supposedly a visit from a federal agent. But this guy seemed really like, you know, almost plaintive, pleading with Lewis Arthur saying,

oh, come on, you know, if you blow something up, we're just going to have to respond. This isn't the way to do what you want. You know what's freaking them out right now is if the people really take to what I'm saying. Seriously. Please stop.

I want them to stop. Then help me stop them. Okay, how do we go about it your way? What do you want me to do to help me address what they've done here? What I would like you to do is stop calling for any attacks on the military. What do you want me to do that's going to replace that? What's my steps? Lewis, the only endgame if you continue going down the path of making threats against the military,

making threats against the military, making threats against critical infrastructure. The only end game there is for us to go to the United States attorney and arrest you. I don't want to do that. I don't think that's what you need. You know, it kind of reminds me of how the January 6th people were ultimately treated in a way that was was very like, oh, you know, OK, look, if you're still occupying the building, you're going to get in trouble. But maybe if you leave and all this. So it's a strange situation. But I do think ultimately, you know, if you start attacking federal infrastructure, there's probably going to be some blowback.

Yeah, yeah. I was actually going to bring up the January 6th comparison as well, because just as you were talking about it, when I was down there covering it, it was so striking to me that it seemed like the mood was very much like, all right, here are the LARPers. Here they are. They're doing their little protest. They're doing their little dance. They're doing their little choreography.

Oh, man, they're getting more and more riled up. Oh, gosh, wait, this is actually spilling over into real violence. And by that point, by the time it has actually spilled over into real violence, you can't really put the genie back in the bottle there. So it's I mean, that's so often the case with these stories. And so much of of what's going on right now is just sort of farcical and clownish up until the moment it becomes like really alarming in real time. The other thing I want to ask you about with this is just I mean, I obviously it's all your beat and you're you're just neck deep in all of the in in all of this stuff with all these people. I feel like I have at least a strong layman's, you know, interest in, in the, the broader constellation of sort of right-wing influencers and all of, all of those people. I had never heard of this guy until, until you pitched this video, you know, a couple of hours ago. It's like, this is just a complete black hole as far as I'm concerned. And that's, that's true. It's easy to miss people when it's all

happening online, right? And when it's all happening online, right? And when it's all happening in these sort of algorithmic spaces like X and even more so than that, like off off site on different apps like Telegram, where it's just I mean, the whole information system is so distributed stuff. Obviously, it becomes easy to keep in to keep in touch with them once there are government agencies reporting that they're showing up at the sites to potentially do damage. Like, that's okay. I guess that's one we have to keep our eye on and go find and pay attention to. But just in kind of the broader principle of the thing, I guess I just wonder, as you're covering all of this, how do you just sort of deal with the fact that it's such a loose ecosystem of all these guys out here in a way that it really never was like this for like the most important, quote unquote, influencers in politics in the past?

Yeah, I mean, it's very complex. I mean, as you said, I mean, they're spread across all these channels, all of these platforms. You know, I mean, for me, I think you have to look for when it spills over into the real world. And in this case, the idea of blowing up radars or its site certainly qualifies. I mean, I was just at the Justice Department watching another group that claims, you know, we got to arrest all these judges and what have you. And you kind of keep an eye on them until something happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, again, like the January 6th thing, like I remember the morning of January 6th before the rally had even happened, there were like a couple of guys like in folding chairs down by the reflecting pool there

who were handing out like little flyers. They were like, hey, we're assembling a militia. We're gonna wear these armbands. It's gonna be cool. We're gonna take back our government. It was just two guys, you know, handing out loose sheets of paper. And it's kind of like, oh, okay, that's really interesting.

Cool, you know, good luck. Go on with your day. Have a fun time. Enjoy your little party. And then, you know, and then it's not quite so clownish anymore. Yeah. I mean, I think that really sums up kind of the times we live in where it's, you know, on one hand you, you, you have to take it very seriously. And also you have to go back to acknowledge like a lot of this stuff is just

totally ludicrous. Yeah. Kind of funny. Right. I mean, like it will be less funny if he blows one up, but I, I, I feel like I'm gonna have to follow this guy to follow his future escapades. I kind of hope someone is keeping an eye on him. I hope one of his 15 or 20 acolytes that you were mentioning before is like a federal agent or something like that. That seems like it would be a fruitful use of at least one or two people's time. All right. Well, thanks for coming on and breaking it down.