They look like det cord explosions to me. It would be easy to install something in the building over a few days to a few months. Putin says he warned the US about the attack, so it's possible that the intelligence agencies knew the targets were the towers or even guided the attacks to the towers and set up the explosives for even more damage. Steel and concrete doesn't just do that minutes after any fire. Those explosions were controlled top to bottom.

We do have directed energy weapons here in California. They test them all the time here. It's probably because we have dry heat so much. The weapons are more easily noticeable in very high outputs. They don't just hit the target; they affect anything in the way, including the air.