Texas Governor Greg Abbott Shares War Thunder Clip Thinking It Was Real Combat Footage

War Thunder's graphics just fooled a sitting US Governor. And honestly, that's kind of wild.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott became the subject of widespread ridicule on Sunday, 1 March, after he reposted a video on X that he clearly believed was genuine military footage. The clip supposedly showed a US warship shooting down an Iranian fighter jet. Abbott added a two-word caption, "Bye bye" hit post to his 1.4 million followers, and then... quietly deleted the whole thing once people started pointing out the obvious.

The footage wasn't real. It came from War Thunder, Gaijin Entertainment's long-running WWII and modern military simulator.

How Did This Happen?

The original post Abbott reshared was uploaded by a pro-Donald Trump account with the caption: "An Iranian plane VS a US ship. I could watch this all day." Abbott jumped straight in with the "Bye bye" reply, seemingly doing no further checking before hitting repost to over a million followers.

X's "Readers added context" feature flagged the post fairly quickly. The community note read: "The video shows simulated footage from a video game depicting a battleship; the US Navy has no battleships in service and no Iranian plane attack on a US ship has occurred."

That last part is particularly telling. The footage wasn't a real battle but was actually a recording from the World War II-themed simulator. The US Navy does not currently have any battleships in active service, a major red flag since the video prominently featured that type of vessel.

The video had previously been fact-checked by Reuters in 2024, when it spread online falsely claiming to show a Yemeni attack on the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. So this particular clip had already done the rounds once before.

War Thunder Looks That Good Now

If there's a silver lining here for Gaijin Entertainment, it's that their game looks convincing enough to fool elected officials. Developers like Gaijin Entertainment create massive multiplayer experiences that focus on armoured vehicles, aviation, and naval vessels from the early 1900s through to the present day. Simulations like War Thunder rely on historical documents and physical data to build over 2,500 different vehicles with realistic graphics and sound effects.

Abbott's office stayed quiet following the deletion. Instead, he issued a formal statement endorsing the recent military actions and directing the Texas National Guard to increase security at ports and energy facilities. No comment on the gaming mix-up itself.

This Keeps Happening

Abbott isn't alone in this, for what it's worth. Russian state media once used footage from the combat simulator Arma to depict the heroism of a fallen soldier in Syria. In another instance, the BBC once accidentally used the United Nations Space Command logo from the Halo series during a report on the real-life UN Security Council. More recently, the war in Ukraine became a source of this kind of misinformation, with videos claiming to show Operation Spiderweb, a massive drone and missile raid, actually being simulations made in Arma 3.

Abbott is far from the only social media user getting duped amid the US military action in Iran. Wired reported that X had become a cesspool of misinformation following the joint strikes by Israel and the United States on Iran. There was apparently at least one other War Thunder clip circulating under the same false premise that same weekend.

The irony is hard to miss. A game known in gaming circles largely for players leaking actual classified military documents to win arguments about tank armour values ended up fooling a state Governor into thinking he was watching a real war. War Thunder's relationship with reality has always been... complicated.