I think that, between the earlier articles about this effect happening in the mainland US[1] and now Germany, it's safe to say that at this point the hypothesis that this is some benign phenomenon (e.g. cricket noises[2]) has been sufficiently debunked.
Given that, the current interesting question is whether this effect is unintentional (e.g. two newly-deployed RF technologies that interact with each other in a harmful way) or whether it's flat-out a weapon. Given that almost exclusively US officials have acquired these symptoms, I would like to hear the arguments that one would give for it not being a weapon.
Essentially, for whatever reason, people working in the Cuban embassy started feeling ill with mysterious symptoms and that caught on. It could have originally been something like sick building syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_building_syndrome
But then people latched on to the idea that it was caused by some kind of sonic device or hitherto unknown weapon targeting embassies. Someone starts to feel sick? Oh my god, it could be Havana Syndrome! Now that you mention it Becky, I'm starting to feel queasy too...
A parallel is how the notion that MSG causes headaches caught on. One doctor suggested that there is a link between eating Chinese restaurant food flavored with MSG and headaches. But "Thirty years after the Chinese restaurant syndrome was debunked, stigmas about MSG persist." People who believe this will legitimately start to feel sick if you feed them MSG, even if you didn't actually put any MSG in and lie that you did.
Now I'm not saying this is what is actually happening because we just don't know yet.
Edit: And, most of the symptoms, headache, nausea, anxiety, insomnia, are all really common side effects and can be caused by just about anything.
The article mentions that one patient has an unexplained brain injury comparable to that caused by the shockwave of an explosion. I'm sure the embassy isn't going to release this info to the press, but I'd really like to know what kind of injury we're talking about here, whether it's something that could just occur spontaneously (I mean, if we're talking intracerebral bleeding, that does just happen sometimes), and if it's been tested for or seen in anyone else complaining of these symptoms.
There's a HUGE difference between "some people are getting unexplained headaches and brainfog" (yeah, so are half my patients right now, during this time of unprecedented stress) and "some people are getting unexplained brain bleeds" (YIKES)
This was the leading hypothesis for years, including for me, but even about a year ago I was considering betting a lot of money on a prediction market that it's indeed an intentional deployment of a weapon. I've found myself arguing the case with people on HN on several occasions, in part because I'm extremely conspiracy theory-skeptical in general and felt like people were wrong to dismiss this as any other silly conspiracy theory circulating around.
One factor worth noting is the consistency of the self-reports of the phenomenon and the symptoms, subsequent brain scans showing concussive injury, and medical diagnoses of brain damage.
At this point I'd definitely bet if I could find a way to. I'd say I'm about 85% confident it's a weapon. And unless there's an elaborate false flag or psyop going on, then if the claims in this article are true, it seems Russian intelligence officers are likely the ones responsible for at least some of the attacks: https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro... (Oct 2020).
I think a large part of his has been people misattributing their real illness to a harmless sound which was actually there, however. Which has made the whole thing a big mess with confusion around "sonic" weaponry.
> Given that almost exclusively US officials have acquired these symptoms, I would like to hear the arguments that one would give for it not being a weapon.
Only US officials work in US military/intelligence (which all embassies are to an extent) installations. If it's something they deployed, e.g. some new surveillance or security tech, it makes sense that it would affect people working there. And the US intelligence community would probably rather have a few people get inconvenienced than not use their toys.
Note that many of the 'attacks' happened when staff were at home, not in the embassies. So this would have to be some sort of spytech deployed in diplomats' homes.
It seems the only way it could not be a weapon is if the unintentional side effect was coming from some other kind of device (ex. surveillance) that is also specifically targeted at U.S. diplomats.
Surveillance of diplomatic missions does tend to use cutting edge technologies, so that's not entirely improbable, but if harming people wasn't the goal then it seems they would be concerned about it drawing attention to their technique.
> I would like to hear the arguments that one would give for it not being a weapon.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but when it does the simplest correlation is often pointing at the correct causation.
Could be a weapon... Or, could be two technologies the US regularly deploys to its own bases interfering with each other (perhaps some standard-issue State Department tech and some classified self-snooping tech the NSA or CIA deploys to monitor its own agents who are considered sensitive national assets?). That would explain why the incidents happen only on US bases and not, say, to any other adversaries of the Russian or Chinese state.
At this point, it's either mass hysteria, a weapon of some kind or something common within this group. Are these officials forced to carry some kind of equipment that can cause this? Were they required to get some shots/drugs, implants or training that causes mental/auditory/etc issues? It's also remotely possible it's just another ploy to foster more fear in population.
It is odd that it apparently affects a particular specialized group of people and that they would make this public without figuring things out first.
How exactly do you justify this? If mass psychogenic illnesses were so easy to instantiate, they would be extremely common. That's just not how the world works.
From the 1950s to the 1990s or so, it was well-known that mind control was a real thing. If someone got hold of you, they could literally go into your brain and program you to think whatever they wanted, and unless a "deprogrammer" turned you back you'd be in their thrall forever. An American of the 1980s would have no trouble listing off examples of people who've been successfully mind controlled in this way: Patty Hearst, the Manson family, the Peoples Temple...
I think this has to be seen in that light. There's something happening, and we should investigate it, but that's no guarantee it's at all like what we're thinking.
"As the officer pulled his car into a busy intersection, he suddenly felt as though his head were going to explode. His two-year-old son, in a car seat in the back, started screaming. As the officer sped out of the intersection, the pressure in his head ceased, and his son went quiet."
"In 2019, a White House official reported experiencing debilitating symptoms while walking her dog in a Virginia suburb of Washington; the incident was publicly reported in 2020."
The most common explanation is microwave radiation. So, how large of a device do people think it would take to induce these symptoms?
Speculate, what would this device look like?
----
EDIT: China used microwave weapons against India in a border dispute. How similar are the symptoms?
This is a reference to the Princeton study. The authors claimed to have found "brain abnormalities" by inspecting MRIs of the diplomats. Other neuroscientists criticized the study. The MRIs themselves are classified and has not been released to the public.
If Russia had a secret sci-fi weapon like this it would be very stupid (and completely useless) to waste it on US-diplomats.
If it exists, it is likely is an unintended side effect. Either something is more toxic than expected, more contaminated, or more physically damaging to people.
Or the effect is quite common if one just looks closely at (a specific group of) people, because „healthy“ just means „not properly diagnosed, yet“.
> If Russia had a secret sci-fi weapon like this it would be very stupid (and completely useless) to waste it on US-diplomats.
...like...you are aware the Russians used polonium traceable to their reactors to publicly poison individuals they disagreed with, right? Using special stuff to explicitly trace back to them is kind of their MO.
What I don't understand about discussions in this thread is that RF is treated as almost magic and 'new technology' can make it do anything. Electromagnetism is virtually perfectly understood and there is nothing more it can do, definitely not responsible for nausea ffs without burning you from the outside... (unless it's ionizing radiation at the other side o the spectrum from RF but radiation sickness is also well understood and would be super hard to miss). Not to mention sound that apparently is being heard...
If someone really is targeting US diplomats worldwide, with those sets of symptoms, why does it have to be a sci-fi tech instead of, old as time itself, plain poisoning
There is a skin and a skull in front of it. Of course you can fry someone with microwaves, magnetrons are all sort of dangerous at high enough power (lasers are too) but what they are not is selective and a cause of weird brain effects
And also, the only thing you need to detect it is a very simple antenna, you can't hide radiation
We're still at the phase of this story where we don't actually know what's going on. WSJ is reporting on it like it's understood, but the conclusion of NASEM (https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-diplomats-illnesses-likely-...) was that more research is needed.
Hard to detect "directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy" when you have no idea what you're actually looking for. If you go looking at the bulk of the electromagnetic spectrum for correlators to a vague symptom list, you'll definitely find them but be no closer to explaining causality (or finding culprits).
This always smells like the US Govt knows exactly what's going on, but it's too sensitive to come right out and say "The Chinese spy agency is microwaving our brains, but we've been microwaving them back". Better to drop a bit of news and hint at it to put some political pressure, but not get the US population upset enough to demand sanctions or something economically disastrous.
"At least two [!] U.S. officials stationed in Germany sought [...]and some [!] victims were left unable to work".
I'm not a native speaker, but two officials had troubles, and "some" of these two are unable to work.
"“There is no evidence about what happened to us, but it is striking that some of us had worked on Russia-related issues,” said the worker, who declined to be named."
So the weapon also knows on what people work on?
Or should we assume a perfect infiltration of the US intelligence aparatus by the Russians so they know what person is working on what? Or who is sitting where?
But not only that, but
"In some cases, the symptoms have persisted after the relocation, leading security services to believe that the people targeted have been tracked down to their new residence."
And the weapon can detect nationality (if not targetting appartments but the embassy), as
"Some 20 American officials in Austria have reported the mysterious symptoms—the largest number since Cuba" and no Austrian is affected.
I do think this is a really badly written article.
No, multiple officials had troubles, and the number (beyond that it is multiple) is not being released because they were (in part) in sensitive intelligence work and revealing the number affected would itself be providing valuable information to hostile intelligence actors.
> So the weapon also knows on what people work on?
More likely, the people using the weapon do, or know the particular specific locations where that work is done, or know what work someone is doing and are targeting others by association.
> Or should we assume a perfect infiltration of the US intelligence aparatus by the Russians so they know what person is working on what?
It wouldn't be unprecedented for the Russians (or, at least, their Soviet predecessors) to have high-level penetration of major Western (counter/)intelligence services. Ames and Hanssen in the US, the Cambridge ring in the UK, etc.
Readit News
Given that, the current interesting question is whether this effect is unintentional (e.g. two newly-deployed RF technologies that interact with each other in a harmful way) or whether it's flat-out a weapon. Given that almost exclusively US officials have acquired these symptoms, I would like to hear the arguments that one would give for it not being a weapon.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/mysterious-health-in... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18837561
Essentially, for whatever reason, people working in the Cuban embassy started feeling ill with mysterious symptoms and that caught on. It could have originally been something like sick building syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_building_syndrome
But then people latched on to the idea that it was caused by some kind of sonic device or hitherto unknown weapon targeting embassies. Someone starts to feel sick? Oh my god, it could be Havana Syndrome! Now that you mention it Becky, I'm starting to feel queasy too...
A parallel is how the notion that MSG causes headaches caught on. One doctor suggested that there is a link between eating Chinese restaurant food flavored with MSG and headaches. But "Thirty years after the Chinese restaurant syndrome was debunked, stigmas about MSG persist." People who believe this will legitimately start to feel sick if you feed them MSG, even if you didn't actually put any MSG in and lie that you did.
Now I'm not saying this is what is actually happening because we just don't know yet.
Edit: And, most of the symptoms, headache, nausea, anxiety, insomnia, are all really common side effects and can be caused by just about anything.
There's a HUGE difference between "some people are getting unexplained headaches and brainfog" (yeah, so are half my patients right now, during this time of unprecedented stress) and "some people are getting unexplained brain bleeds" (YIKES)
One factor worth noting is the consistency of the self-reports of the phenomenon and the symptoms, subsequent brain scans showing concussive injury, and medical diagnoses of brain damage.
At this point I'd definitely bet if I could find a way to. I'd say I'm about 85% confident it's a weapon. And unless there's an elaborate false flag or psyop going on, then if the claims in this article are true, it seems Russian intelligence officers are likely the ones responsible for at least some of the attacks: https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro... (Oct 2020).
Possibly prompted by historical precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Signal
I mean I would guess this is self inflicted.
[I'm a bit baffled by the comments that are simply assuming incompetence from these organizations.]
Only US officials work in US military/intelligence (which all embassies are to an extent) installations. If it's something they deployed, e.g. some new surveillance or security tech, it makes sense that it would affect people working there. And the US intelligence community would probably rather have a few people get inconvenienced than not use their toys.
Surveillance of diplomatic missions does tend to use cutting edge technologies, so that's not entirely improbable, but if harming people wasn't the goal then it seems they would be concerned about it drawing attention to their technique.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but when it does the simplest correlation is often pointing at the correct causation.
Could be a weapon... Or, could be two technologies the US regularly deploys to its own bases interfering with each other (perhaps some standard-issue State Department tech and some classified self-snooping tech the NSA or CIA deploys to monitor its own agents who are considered sensitive national assets?). That would explain why the incidents happen only on US bases and not, say, to any other adversaries of the Russian or Chinese state.
It is odd that it apparently affects a particular specialized group of people and that they would make this public without figuring things out first.
I think this has to be seen in that light. There's something happening, and we should investigate it, but that's no guarantee it's at all like what we're thinking.
Given these anecdotes from Wikipedia:
"As the officer pulled his car into a busy intersection, he suddenly felt as though his head were going to explode. His two-year-old son, in a car seat in the back, started screaming. As the officer sped out of the intersection, the pressure in his head ceased, and his son went quiet."
"In 2019, a White House official reported experiencing debilitating symptoms while walking her dog in a Virginia suburb of Washington; the incident was publicly reported in 2020."
The most common explanation is microwave radiation. So, how large of a device do people think it would take to induce these symptoms?
Speculate, what would this device look like?
---- EDIT: China used microwave weapons against India in a border dispute. How similar are the symptoms?
https://eurasiantimes.com/has-india-finally-acknowledged-tha...
Deleted Comment
Right in the first half they mentioned that there was a physical representation of the illness in the brain tissue when they did a MRI scan.
This is NOT a shared paranoia, because you can't see them on a brain scan. This seems like a very real and frightening disease.
If it exists, it is likely is an unintended side effect. Either something is more toxic than expected, more contaminated, or more physically damaging to people. Or the effect is quite common if one just looks closely at (a specific group of) people, because „healthy“ just means „not properly diagnosed, yet“.
...like...you are aware the Russians used polonium traceable to their reactors to publicly poison individuals they disagreed with, right? Using special stuff to explicitly trace back to them is kind of their MO.
If someone really is targeting US diplomats worldwide, with those sets of symptoms, why does it have to be a sci-fi tech instead of, old as time itself, plain poisoning
And also, the only thing you need to detect it is a very simple antenna, you can't hide radiation
The only situation where it wouldn't make sense to do this is if we already knew the cause, and it was something we had built.
Hard to detect "directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy" when you have no idea what you're actually looking for. If you go looking at the bulk of the electromagnetic spectrum for correlators to a vague symptom list, you'll definitely find them but be no closer to explaining causality (or finding culprits).
Hard to believe, any source for this?
I'm not a native speaker, but two officials had troubles, and "some" of these two are unable to work.
"“There is no evidence about what happened to us, but it is striking that some of us had worked on Russia-related issues,” said the worker, who declined to be named."
So the weapon also knows on what people work on?
Or should we assume a perfect infiltration of the US intelligence aparatus by the Russians so they know what person is working on what? Or who is sitting where?
But not only that, but
"In some cases, the symptoms have persisted after the relocation, leading security services to believe that the people targeted have been tracked down to their new residence."
And the weapon can detect nationality (if not targetting appartments but the embassy), as
"Some 20 American officials in Austria have reported the mysterious symptoms—the largest number since Cuba" and no Austrian is affected.
I do think this is a really badly written article.
No, multiple officials had troubles, and the number (beyond that it is multiple) is not being released because they were (in part) in sensitive intelligence work and revealing the number affected would itself be providing valuable information to hostile intelligence actors.
> So the weapon also knows on what people work on?
More likely, the people using the weapon do, or know the particular specific locations where that work is done, or know what work someone is doing and are targeting others by association.
> Or should we assume a perfect infiltration of the US intelligence aparatus by the Russians so they know what person is working on what?
It wouldn't be unprecedented for the Russians (or, at least, their Soviet predecessors) to have high-level penetration of major Western (counter/)intelligence services. Ames and Hanssen in the US, the Cambridge ring in the UK, etc.