Was the Maui wildfire a pretext to reclaim Lahaina and turn it into a smart city?

08/30/2023 / By Arsenio Toledo

The combination of government negligence and the immediate response of corporations to the wildfire on the Hawaiian island of Maui that pretty much obliterated the town of Lahaina strongly suggests that the fire is being used as a pretext to turn the place into a “smart city.”

A smart city – a term sometimes interchangeably used with the “15-minute city” – is a modern, technologically advanced municipality wherein municipal services like traffic control, energy distribution, water services, waste collection and even elections are handled, at least to some extent, in an automated and “intelligent” manner. This can be done using sensors, connected smart devices, communications technologies and artificial intelligence. (Related: Lawfare with Tom Renz: Biden FAILS to empathize with Maui wildfire victims by comparing disaster to kitchen fire – Brighteon.TV.)

The theory stems from a post commenting on a video surveying the damage done to Lahaina. This post noted how, in January, a tech conference held on Maui – the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences – focused almost entirely on ways to turn the entire island “into an entire smart island.” This transformation would entail changing the island’s entire power grid into one relying on renewable energy and “pushing everybody into electric vehicles.”

The post further notes that, in September, Maui will be hosting the Hawaii Digital Government Summit which will focus on ways in which AI can be used to essentially take over the running of the government.

Seth Holehouse, remarking on the theory in his program “Man in America,” notes that this theory “makes too much sense” due to the convergence of multiple factors that made it possible for the wildfire that ravaged Lahaina to be as devastating as it was.

“When you start looking into the details of these fires, you start to have a lot of really strange stuff that you’re finding,” said Holehouse. “You’re finding that the local governments weren’t actually helpful. In fact, they were inhibiting people’s ability to escape. You find that they weren’t using the practices to properly maintain the forest to make sure these fires wouldn’t happen. You find that they’re cutting water off.”

“You find that there’s so many other things that were happening and laws that were recently passed, saying that this land can only be reclaimed if there’s a very bad natural disaster,” he continued. “And so, you can see that something sinister is afoot. And at the same time, we’re hearing the discussions about smart cities … and there’s so many ways this story could fit together.”

“Fact checkers” immediately “debunk” smart city claim

Multiple mainstream media outlets immediately jumped on the claims regarding the establishment of a smart city in Lahaina by claiming that it was false.

The Associated Press claimed that the January conference in Maui was not about turning the island into a smart island but instead a more general conference on emerging information technology around the world. AP further argues that the Digital Government Summit is not about using AI to run the government but about how to “adapt emerging technologies.”

Similarly, USA Today claimed that “there is no evidence that the Maui wildfires were intentionally set” by the government as part of an effort to reclaim Lahaina and turn it into a smart city.

Even the office of Hawaii’s Democratic Gov. Josh Green wrote an emailed statement supposedly debunking the claims. “There is no truth to the horrendous assertion that the fires were deliberately set to raze the historic town of Lahaina, which was the first capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom,” he said.

“The idea of resorting to destructive measures, causing harm to a historic landmark and resulting in numerous fatalities, all in an attempt to transform Maui into a smart island, stretches the boundaries of my imagination,” claimed Tung Bui, an IT professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and chair of the January conference.

Learn more about the fire that ravaged Maui at Disaster.news.

Watch this episode of “Man in America” as host Seth Holehouse interviews Todd Callender regarding the disturbing theory associated with the Maui wildfire.

This video is from the Man in America channel on Brighteon.com.