A March report from the National Academy of Sciences found that "directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy" was the most likely cause of the strange set of symptoms -- so-called microwave energy
Maybe the Biden administration should start wearing tin foil hats?
Noob q: wouldn’t that be the case only for radiation coming along the body axis? If tin foil reflects these waves at all, having the radiation come from other angles should make it less bad, no? Like if they come face-on, they won’t catch any of the concave part of the “dish” and be scattered away instead.
It was mostly a joke, but there is still a focusing effect for sources that are off-axis, so it'd really depend on direction and shape of the foil hat. e.g. if it covered a lot of the back of the head but left the face open, like a crash helmet, the main axis wouldn't be straight down, for a tinfoil cap it would be.
Microwave retroreflectors are a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector#In_radar Too large for personal use, but one could certainly line a wall with them. Would increase the danger of using such a weapon, to have a significant portion of the signal reflected back at the operator.
Not sure why CNN chose to say March here, but the report (and CNN's own article that was linked in the quote!) was from Dec 2020 [1]. The CDC also studied this in 2018-2019, but they didn't produce a theory [2].
You don't need to develop anything. This is a bog standard antenna exercise. At the level of power being used here, detecting it is trivial. The only issue for an omnidirectional antenna is perhaps portability. The powers that be most likely already know who is behind the attacks, or at least have a good guess. What they are willing to sell to the press is another question entirely.
I've always wondered what the reasoning behind discussing these topics with the press. I can understand if some nosy reporter is doing their job, uncovering information that is being hidden from the public. But in situations like this, I can't really see the value in discussing with the press; and I'm sure they wouldn't say anything to the press without getting some value from it.
Given how long this particular article goes on about how they don't know anything, they're baffled etc., I'm guessing the value of it is in concealing how much they do know. Maybe an adversary is responsible and they know perfectly well and want to make further observations. Or maybe our own spy agencies are responsible.
It doesn't connect to a smartphone, but I have a device about the size of a TV remote I use for measuring interference that would pick this up. It cost me about $9 in parts minus the arduino and 3D printer resin to make.
When I was researching the Cuba cases, I stumbled upon this Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect. It says there is a mechanism where microwaves can cause you to hear sounds that don't exist. In the 70s, they apparently improved the method so subjects were able to recognize 9 out of 10 words, although I don't think it's been reproduced. There are some strange patents as well. The problem is this subject is laced with conspiracy theory because you'll find forums for people with mental illness attributing their symptoms to these devices. But it is interesting, and I'd expect if it were possible the military would have such devices. Has there been any proof that this method actually works?
That mechanism, by the way, is microwave heating of the brain -- thermal expansion causes cranial pressure to rise, and by carefully modulating the microwaves those pressure signals are interpreted as sound by your inner ear.
The entire head is being heated, slightly, but it can only cool by dissipating that heat to the environment. This happens slowly enough I do not see it as possible to achieve audible frequencies with such a heating/cooling cycle.
The auditory effects have to be generated by RF, possibly frequency phased modulation, interacting with the inner ear.
The ear could be acting as a high-pass filter, so you don't need to cool, you just need to vary the rate of heating. Of course, that would mean that the temperature would be rising over time.
The Soviets focused on the non-thermal applications of microwave radiation which can cause a variety of symptoms making them plausibly deniable. A 1976 report by the Pentagon reviewed Soviet research: https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/FOIA-R...
> "The report detailed Moscow’s investigation of the effects of microwaves on the nervous system. Soviet, and later Russian, scientists found that exposing an animal’s brain to microwaves changed the frequency at which neurons fired. Neurons also became suddenly out of sync with one another. Some brain cells in mice were found to have withered. Nerves became damaged. The radiation also showed the potential to disturb the sacrosanct blood-brain barrier and, according to the DIA, resulted in “the alterations of brain function.” The most common symptoms reported in humans who had been exposed to microwaves for long periods of time sounded familiar: headache, fatigue, perspiration, dizziness, insomnia, depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, and lack of concentration.
> Like Frey, Soviet researchers found that turning the intensity of the beam up or down could produce differing effects in its target. A target’s unique physiology—a slightly different curvature of the skull, for example—also determined how this directed energy would affect them. A weapon that created an ever-changing kaleidoscope of neurological symptoms would have a powerful psychological dimension. If everyone’s symptoms are all slightly different, victims might question whether they’d all been exposed to the same thing—or if they’d been hit at all."
You are also emitting microwaves as blackbody radiation. In order to cause heating they need extreme intensities only found on radar dishes and inside a microwave oven. Radio waves can be harmful when they reach high enough intensities. However the phones and laptops are just fine.
VERY old tube televisions on the other hand could be pretty dangerous. They were essentially particle accelerators and could generate X-rays. Newer tube televisions and LCD displays are completely safe, unless you count the possible disruption of sleep by producing light 16-24 hours a day.
1) Mass hysteria, if you tell enough people about weird unspecific symptoms, a lot of people might experience it.
2) Chemical agents. Food poisoning, the paint used by government contractors, etc.
3) Biological agents. Maybe side-effects of covid or some other virus/bacterium.
4) Some kind of stress-induced disorder, e.g. PTSD.
5) Some kind of technology with radiation, whether microwave weapon or just an overpowered stingray over a long enough time.
To rule these out you'd have to start testing these hypotheses. They say in the article that people could move in and out of the beam, which might speak for #5, but doesn't rule out #1. We could distribute "tin foil hats", or more accurately wire-mesh suits, that block a wide array of microwave radiation, to officials. If they experience the onset of these symptoms they can put these on and see if it brings relief.
This still wouldn't rule out #1 due to the placebo effect, but at least it would rule out the other nefarious causes.
Now if that does still point in this direction you could start giving targeted people antennae to detect the radiation to rule out #1.
What is the incidence of these symptoms in government employees vs the general population? Is there even enough evidence to establish that this isn't some unknown neurological disorder (or multiple disorders given the range of symptoms)? The way our medical system is set up, if it's not obvious or catastrophic, you're symptoms will not be investigated in detail. So I tend to think it's a more likely explanation that some directed energy weapon from the Russians. That sounds like a cold war moral panic.
I read most of the report when it was released, and their conclusion was based on nothing. Their section on whether the syndrome was psychological basically said "all available evidence fits the hypothesis that it's psychological, but there isn't enough to conclusively state it is."
They shouldn't be surprised that a bunch of people are coming forward with a myriad of symptoms after a report like that. Nothing in these two cases described have anything in common, just felt ill somewhere near the White House. I doubt that's uncommon.
This whole thing really seems like some Psychosomatic Disorder. But I suspect that the people affected won't want to believe "it's all in their head". But there are plenty of historical parallels where groups of people started reporting the same malady with no apparent rational cause. And I suspect our modern day focus on rationality will lead to people looking for increasingly outlandish explanations because they don't want to believe that this is just some shared delusion that got out of hand.
I'm calling it now: Covid-22 will be a Dancing Plague -- Also a good name for an ironic book about an air force pilot who wants to become a ballet dancer, but how can he learn to dance, if no one will dance with him...?
Most people have a very recent experience with a similar thing. Someone you know mistook their allergies or some cough for COVID and convinced themselves it was serious. This is a similar concept, except a negative test result only makes things worse.
It does, except the first case. That one was the most descriptive, about a very loud noise in the victim's room. It turns out that it may have been a particular type of cricket that can produce shockingly loud noises, when in an enclosed space (like a hotel room).
My guess is that the first "strange" report, and its mysteriousness, led to people being on-edge and starting to report any and all weirdness, creating this global "pattern".
I was a little skeptical at first, too, and I saw the same report, but at this point I'd bet serious money that the majority of cases are real and not psychosomatic. The psychological explanations have increasingly had less support over the past few years.
It's definitely quite bizarre that there are now at least 3 reports of it happening in the DC area. In one case, someone's dog was also reported as simultaneously being affected. There were also unrelated reports of another dog being affected (vomiting blood, among other things) in a hotel overseas. In both cases, humans and adults were simultaneously affected, and the symptoms both were experiencing wouldn't make sense if it were just a dog reacting to their owner's anxiety.
I have no idea if it's microwaves, and I'm not quite sure if the DC attacks are real, but I think there likely are some sort of deliberate attacks occurring against US diplomats and spies. Maybe a collection method that's inadvertently causing harm, at least.
Here's an interesting article on it: https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro.... I wouldn't be surprised if some of the cases are psychogenic (someone hears about it and then thinks they have it, etc.), but I suspect the majority are real.
>It's definitely quite bizarre that there are now at least 3 reports of it happening in the DC area
No it's not. DC is one of the most paranoid areas around, a significant portion of the population constantly thinks someone is out to get them. Three of those people now have symptoms without a clear medical cause.
>wouldn't make sense if it were just a dog reacting to their owner's anxiety
But it would make sense that the sick, stressed owner accidentally fed the dog something bad, or accidentally kicked the dog without realizing it, or forgot to feed the dog forcing it to eat something bad.
As for Polymeropoulos, he felt sick, completely got over it, then started worrying that the illness may have been the Havana syndrome. Only then did the more serious ailments occur.
I definitely acknowledge the DC cases are the ones that are most likely to be psychogenic. I just found it interesting that different dogs were allegedly affected both there and overseas. And as for Polymeropoulos in particular, I'm not sure.
Do you have any evidence to back up the claim that “a significant portion of the DC population constantly thinks someone is out to get them”? Admittedly anecdotal but I live in DC and I wouldn’t characterize myself or anyone I know in the area that way
Being the center of political and military power means a lot of people have to constantly worry that their political and geopolitical enemies are trying to get one over on them. I'm not saying they're like Dale Gribble, but a certain part of them is professionally paranoid.
We disagree on what constitutes a "significant portion of the population" means then. Even at 1% of the population fitting that description would be ~50,000 people, meaning 3 of them with weird symptoms would not be surprising.
Your account only make the whole thing to be made out of thin air. There are numerous conditions that will make some people or animals to feel bad/vomit. The fact that there are only 3 in the DC area means nothing, go to any large city and you'll find multiple people with similar symptoms from different causes.
Please read the GQ article I linked above if you haven't (https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...). I understand if you're still skeptical after reading it, but it'd be helpful if we could be working off of the same information so that we won't need to use any contrived example scenarios.
But I definitely acknowledge the DC cases are the ones that are most likely to be psychogenic. I just found it interesting that different dogs were allegedly affected both there and overseas.
>I just found it interesting that different dogs were allegedly affected both there and overseas.
Affected in completely different ways, with no symptoms in common. That's terrible evidence, yet it seems to be the primary reason you went from skeptical to convinced.
And, again, I'm more skeptical of the DC cases than the overseas one, and I think it's likely that a decent percentage of the cases are psychogenic.
Here are the dog references, for anyone else curious:
(Alleged Virginia attack)
>Then, shortly after Thanksgiving 2019, according to three sources familiar with the incident, a White House staffer was hit while walking her dog in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. According to a government source familiar with the incident, the staffer passed a parked van. A man got out and walked past her. Her dog started seizing up. Then she felt it too: a high-pitched ringing in her ears, an intense headache, and a tingling on the side of her face.
(Alleged China attack)
>Meanwhile, the roster of victims was growing ever longer. In June 2018, the U.S. State Department evacuated nearly a dozen people from Guangzhou, China, where American diplomats and trade representatives reported feeling symptoms eerily similar to those their colleagues had experienced in Cuba. One victim, Catherine Werner, said that her symptoms began in late 2017, just as Polymeropoulos’s had: a splitting headache, nausea, loss of balance. When her mother went to Guangzhou to help her, she, too, fell ill. Even Werner’s dogs were affected, her mother told NBC News. They began vomiting blood and avoiding the room where Werner and her mother heard the sounds and felt the symptoms start.
These two scenarios definitely did not adjust my confidence about any of this. The reported symptoms are indeed different. I just think it's interesting. It absolutely could be a red herring.
Is there any real reason why we assume were dealing with an physical phenomena induced by an external source(rf/radiation) and not some new variant of post traumatic stress, we are after all dealing with people living/working long hours inside an highly paranoid and potentially very dysfunctional organization.
If there exist an blood test as the article claim it's should point to an chemical source rather then an electromagnetic source of the illness, and if that's the case we are almost certainly looking at American procurement incompetence rather then something nefarious by external actors.
So far there is not a lot of evidence pointing at any kind of illness ray being deployed by nefarious actors.
If there exist an blood test as the article claim it's should point to an chemical source rather then an electromagnetic source of the illness [...]
Not necessarily, you could detect the reaction instead of the cause in the same way an antibody test does not detect the pathogen or a drug test may actually detect a metabolite and not the drug itself.
You can absolutely see results from cooked flesh on a blood test. The problem is that there are other possible causes for the results than cooked flesh
for there to be specific antibodies to the cause i cant see how that would happen without some foreing element having been in the bloodstream. or be the result of close proximity to radioactive materials.
It might be that they don't really have an blood test for specific traces but have an correlation between the presence of stress hormones and people suffering the symptoms which only really proves that the involved people are not lying about feeling sick, it don't really answer the "illness ray" vs "post traumatic stress" question.
This is wrong. There's actually biomarkers for PTSD that are detectable from a blood test. [1]
Stresses can do all sorts of things, change gene expression, trigger proteins or breakdown products, etc, etc. All of those things can produce measurable changes.
yep thats kind of my point, PSTD is a real enough thing that it can legitimately cause symptoms and leave traces in the blood.
The problem is that those are almost exactly the same kind of processes that theoretically could result in an "illness ray" leaving traces in the bloodstream.
A big problem here is probably that the US government haven't yet fully internalized how real PSTD and other stress related symptoms are, and is still treating it as if kind of "fake" especially when it comes to paying for treatments. so the people campaigning for getting the victims help is forced to push some sci-fy inspired illness ray theory.
> we are after all dealing with people living/working long hours inside an highly paranoid and potentially very dysfunctional organization
Given the ever growing info streams pumping ever growing amounts of BS into their heads 24x7, its quite possible the brains Shannon Limit has been breached, which would mean ever increasing errors in what the brain perceives.
There are many blood tests to measure things that are not indicative of a chemical intrusion except in the loosest sense. Blood sugar, stress (cortisol), and vitamin d (blood chemistry changes directly influence by electromagnetic effects) are three basic examples that come to mind. White cell counts (for a number of reasons including radiation damage) comes to mind as well.
FWIW I suspect this is a case of mass hysteria or other psychogenic illness but there really are microwave weapons out there in the real world, and the Havana syndrome symptoms are quite similar to the results of microwave attacks (or accidental exposure, eg a sailor who steps in front of a powerful radar array). In fact I suspect the growing awareness of microwave weaponry - which are sincerely terrifying - makes the prospect of psychogenic illness more likely.
> If there exist an blood test as the article claim it's should point to an chemical source rather then an electromagnetic source of the illness
That’s not true - an EM attack could conceivably affect the blood chemistry directly (radiation can destroy proteins and cause complex organic reactions). But the symptoms themselves will also leave biomarkers that can be picked up - hormones, transmitters, etc. Even if it was a case of mass hysteria you could probably design a low-sensitivity blood test around it.
What if it’s a measures + countermeasures that’s adding up to weird syndromes in some edge cases?
It’s curious that so far it has only been reported to affect American personnel, but you’d imagine an adversary would have many adversarial targets from and in different counties, unless we suspect we are specially targeted and then mostly low level personnel?
It's already been verified unofficially amongst Biden's people that Cuba and this is PRC's doing. I am ready to receive downvotes as is often case criticisms of the CCP on HN are quickly flagged and censored.
Just look at where YC gets a lot of their capital from. It's really sad as a non-American to see how your own fellow citizens actively seek to undermine the values of your country for personal enrichment.
You're not getting downvoted for criticizing the CCP, at least, not from me. You're getting downvoted for making unverifiable claims ("it's been verified unofficially amongst Biden's people") and for your pre-emptive complaining about being downvoted. Just want to make this clear.
This is probably more of a thriller-novel MacGuffin than a hypothesis, but if you compromised a few nearby cell towers to interfere with each other just so, it might be possible to create a small pocket of very intense radiation without needing any other hardware.
It's over 130 diplomats and spies reporting it, at this point. And the reports are very specific and not vague. I'd bet money something real's going on and that the majority of the cases aren't psychogenic.
Yes, and? In my opinion, the evidence points to it being more likely that the majority of cases are real symptoms of an attack or collection technique, even if some of the reports may be psychogenic.
If you wanted to bootstrap a mass psychogenic illness, it'd be harder to come up with a better scenario. You have civilian employees of the US government living out of their comfort zone, in a foreign country that is putatively "the enemy". You're eating unfamiliar foods, sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings, and all the while being told to be on constant alert for the dangers posed by your host country.
> And the reports are very specific and not vague
Some may be specific, but you're significantly overselling this. There are inconsistencies in both the reports of the affected individuals and what data has been allowed to be released by the US government.
Yes, the inconsistencies and just general human nature do make me think some percentage are likely psychogenic. And the microwave explanation doesn't have any specific evidence at the moment. But I think there's more rigor to it than you're suggesting, as well.
I recommend giving that GQ article a full read if you haven't (https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...). It goes into a lot of detail and isn't just some fluff piece. Their sources also claim to have identified FSB personnel near victims at the times of the attacks using the same method Bellingcat used to track and locate Navalny's FSB assassins (leaked telco geolocation data purchased on the black market), as well. That alone doesn't necessarily mean anything beyond surveillance, but it's interesting.
I absolutely could be wrong and it could all turn out to be a mass psychogenic episode. But I'd put my money on there being something here, even if I have no clue what it is. (It could be something as "mundane" as poison or some kind of harmful aerosol.)
It absolutely could be. Don't get me wrong; I'm always skeptical of claims like these, especially if they have no supporting explanation. The reason I think it's plausible is Bellingcat described how they did it here: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-...
>Much of the information we used for our investigations could never be found in most Western countries, but in Russia, is readily available either for free or a fairly modest fee.
They tracked FSB agents' geolocation positions using this data. Note these are just random private citizens with no special access to anything or anyone.
From the GQ article:
>The most compelling evidence, however, came from publicly available data. As has been widely reported, mobile phones track people’s movements, and location-data companies accumulate this information and sell it. Using this sort of data, CIA investigators were able to deduce the whereabouts of Russian agents, and place them in close physical proximity to the CIA officers at the time they had been attacked when they were in Poland, Georgia, Australia, and Taiwan. In each case, individuals believed to be FSB agents were within range of the CIA officers who had been hit in 2019. In two of the incidents, location data apparently showed FSB agents in the same hotel at the same time their targets experienced the onset of symptoms.
>When I asked Polymeropoulos about the CIA investigation, he said that it was conducted after he retired and that, because he did not have direct knowledge of it, he could not comment on it. He did say, however, that it would not be difficult to use the same techniques, analyzing publicly available data, that had been used by organizations like Bellingcat, which have employed similar methods to expose Russian operations in Europe. “Anyone can buy the cell-phone data on the open market, and you can see where people went,” Polymeropoulos explained. “And perhaps the reason why it seems to have worked is because, just like you saw with all of the GRU activities, they’re sloppy.” GRU machinations were discovered because officers had made several embarrassing missteps, like leaving behind taxi receipts that showed their starting address as GRU headquarters. In the case of the microwave attacks, it seemed FSB operatives had brought their phones with them while carrying out their missions—typically a no-no in the world of covert operations. “There’s ways intelligence officers cover their tracks,” Polymeropoulos marveled. “If I’m going off to do something like that, I’m not taking my phone. It’s insane. It’s so sloppy.”
Definitely could be CIA propaganda. But as Polymeropoulos explains, if Bellingcat could do it, the CIA definitely could, too. Maybe Bellingcat could even retroactively try to confirm this, perhaps.
That's with a direct stimulus, though. I'm sure if someone put a fake "energy weapon" gun next to your or my head and pulled the trigger, we'd probably start feeling psychosomatic symptoms, too.
In these cases, the symptoms always come on totally unexpectedly and abruptly, and immediately dissipate if the victim walks away and return if they return. And they just so happen to only occur in Havana and Moscow rooms with American and Canadian spies and diplomats (aka probably undercover spies, in many cases) in them, with the exception of these three reported DC/Virginia cases.
I think it's likely some percentage of these cases are psychogenic, and it's even more likely for the DC cases, but I think it's more likely than not that a lot of them are real. It definitely might not be some kind of microwave weapon, but whether it's just some kind of noxious chemical or some crazy invention, I'd bet on it being real and deliberate. I'm a very skeptical person and tend not to buy conspiracy theories like these, but I think there's enough substance at this point to consider it likely, IMO.
For those interested, below is a YT link to a long conversation with Marc Polymeropoulos [0], a survivor of a Havana Syndrome attack and a former CIA Senior Intelligence Service Officer. He describes the evening of his "attack" in detail. He also goes into great detail discussing his attempts to get help through various medical channels. Curiously, it appears as if most/all survivors have developed occipital neuralgia.
He also discusses the fact that apparently, after geofencing the area around the attacks, there is a known Russian agent in the proximity of the victim every time.
I take all of this with a grain of salt; I find it difficult to trust any intelligence agency without a healthy dose of skepticism, but quite interesting nonetheless.
I read a convincing article a while back about these incidents in Cuba, by a neurologist saying this is all totally consistent with stress triggered neurologic incidents, and the microwave/sonic weapon stuff was all extraordinary claims with little evidence.
The first case listed here just says "headaches and sleep trouble," buddy, I have that twice a week. I'm no expert but I'm inclined to believe the intelligence apparatus is on some overeager pattern matching.
This is a really poorly-written article. The headline mentions a syndrome, then besides a very brief description of a mild case, proceeds to give no description as to the actual symptoms of the syndrome in the first 5 or 6 paragraphs.
It links to an article about Havana Syndrome, which I assume gives more detailed symptoms, but that’s not the point. An article describing a mysterious “syndrome” should have the symptoms front and centre, not hidden at the end of the article or behind a link. It’s very poor journalism in my opinion
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 187 ms ] threadMaybe the Biden administration should start wearing tin foil hats?
Apparently there's been some very recent research into planar (and presumably more portable) microwave retroreflectors as well: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9060553
[1] https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25889/an-assessment-of-illness-i... [2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20444983-foia-21-003...
Believe it or not, your smartphone already has hardware for dealing with microwaves.
Collecting intelligence is one of the main reasons for international diplomacy to exist.
The auditory effects have to be generated by RF, possibly frequency phased modulation, interacting with the inner ear.
The Soviets focused on the non-thermal applications of microwave radiation which can cause a variety of symptoms making them plausibly deniable. A 1976 report by the Pentagon reviewed Soviet research: https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/FOIA-R...
This article from few days ago has a lot more info than the CNN post: https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...
from the GQ article:
> "The report detailed Moscow’s investigation of the effects of microwaves on the nervous system. Soviet, and later Russian, scientists found that exposing an animal’s brain to microwaves changed the frequency at which neurons fired. Neurons also became suddenly out of sync with one another. Some brain cells in mice were found to have withered. Nerves became damaged. The radiation also showed the potential to disturb the sacrosanct blood-brain barrier and, according to the DIA, resulted in “the alterations of brain function.” The most common symptoms reported in humans who had been exposed to microwaves for long periods of time sounded familiar: headache, fatigue, perspiration, dizziness, insomnia, depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, and lack of concentration.
> Like Frey, Soviet researchers found that turning the intensity of the beam up or down could produce differing effects in its target. A target’s unique physiology—a slightly different curvature of the skull, for example—also determined how this directed energy would affect them. A weapon that created an ever-changing kaleidoscope of neurological symptoms would have a powerful psychological dimension. If everyone’s symptoms are all slightly different, victims might question whether they’d all been exposed to the same thing—or if they’d been hit at all."
this worries me
VERY old tube televisions on the other hand could be pretty dangerous. They were essentially particle accelerators and could generate X-rays. Newer tube televisions and LCD displays are completely safe, unless you count the possible disruption of sleep by producing light 16-24 hours a day.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/09/when-...
https://www.cell.com/cell-systems/pdf/S2405-4712(20)30372-0....
1) Mass hysteria, if you tell enough people about weird unspecific symptoms, a lot of people might experience it.
2) Chemical agents. Food poisoning, the paint used by government contractors, etc.
3) Biological agents. Maybe side-effects of covid or some other virus/bacterium.
4) Some kind of stress-induced disorder, e.g. PTSD.
5) Some kind of technology with radiation, whether microwave weapon or just an overpowered stingray over a long enough time.
To rule these out you'd have to start testing these hypotheses. They say in the article that people could move in and out of the beam, which might speak for #5, but doesn't rule out #1. We could distribute "tin foil hats", or more accurately wire-mesh suits, that block a wide array of microwave radiation, to officials. If they experience the onset of these symptoms they can put these on and see if it brings relief.
This still wouldn't rule out #1 due to the placebo effect, but at least it would rule out the other nefarious causes.
Now if that does still point in this direction you could start giving targeted people antennae to detect the radiation to rule out #1.
They shouldn't be surprised that a bunch of people are coming forward with a myriad of symptoms after a report like that. Nothing in these two cases described have anything in common, just felt ill somewhere near the White House. I doubt that's uncommon.
My guess is that the first "strange" report, and its mysteriousness, led to people being on-edge and starting to report any and all weirdness, creating this global "pattern".
Source: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/76hgkmv/havana-synd...
Sound recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw5MLAu-kKs
It's definitely quite bizarre that there are now at least 3 reports of it happening in the DC area. In one case, someone's dog was also reported as simultaneously being affected. There were also unrelated reports of another dog being affected (vomiting blood, among other things) in a hotel overseas. In both cases, humans and adults were simultaneously affected, and the symptoms both were experiencing wouldn't make sense if it were just a dog reacting to their owner's anxiety.
I have no idea if it's microwaves, and I'm not quite sure if the DC attacks are real, but I think there likely are some sort of deliberate attacks occurring against US diplomats and spies. Maybe a collection method that's inadvertently causing harm, at least.
Here's an interesting article on it: https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro.... I wouldn't be surprised if some of the cases are psychogenic (someone hears about it and then thinks they have it, etc.), but I suspect the majority are real.
No it's not. DC is one of the most paranoid areas around, a significant portion of the population constantly thinks someone is out to get them. Three of those people now have symptoms without a clear medical cause.
>wouldn't make sense if it were just a dog reacting to their owner's anxiety
But it would make sense that the sick, stressed owner accidentally fed the dog something bad, or accidentally kicked the dog without realizing it, or forgot to feed the dog forcing it to eat something bad.
As for Polymeropoulos, he felt sick, completely got over it, then started worrying that the illness may have been the Havana syndrome. Only then did the more serious ailments occur.
Not OP, but I'd point to people working in Fort Meade and Langley who are paranoid by trade.
But I definitely acknowledge the DC cases are the ones that are most likely to be psychogenic. I just found it interesting that different dogs were allegedly affected both there and overseas.
Affected in completely different ways, with no symptoms in common. That's terrible evidence, yet it seems to be the primary reason you went from skeptical to convinced.
And, again, I'm more skeptical of the DC cases than the overseas one, and I think it's likely that a decent percentage of the cases are psychogenic.
Here are the dog references, for anyone else curious:
(Alleged Virginia attack)
>Then, shortly after Thanksgiving 2019, according to three sources familiar with the incident, a White House staffer was hit while walking her dog in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. According to a government source familiar with the incident, the staffer passed a parked van. A man got out and walked past her. Her dog started seizing up. Then she felt it too: a high-pitched ringing in her ears, an intense headache, and a tingling on the side of her face.
(Alleged China attack)
>Meanwhile, the roster of victims was growing ever longer. In June 2018, the U.S. State Department evacuated nearly a dozen people from Guangzhou, China, where American diplomats and trade representatives reported feeling symptoms eerily similar to those their colleagues had experienced in Cuba. One victim, Catherine Werner, said that her symptoms began in late 2017, just as Polymeropoulos’s had: a splitting headache, nausea, loss of balance. When her mother went to Guangzhou to help her, she, too, fell ill. Even Werner’s dogs were affected, her mother told NBC News. They began vomiting blood and avoiding the room where Werner and her mother heard the sounds and felt the symptoms start.
These two scenarios definitely did not adjust my confidence about any of this. The reported symptoms are indeed different. I just think it's interesting. It absolutely could be a red herring.
If there exist an blood test as the article claim it's should point to an chemical source rather then an electromagnetic source of the illness, and if that's the case we are almost certainly looking at American procurement incompetence rather then something nefarious by external actors.
So far there is not a lot of evidence pointing at any kind of illness ray being deployed by nefarious actors.
Not necessarily, you could detect the reaction instead of the cause in the same way an antibody test does not detect the pathogen or a drug test may actually detect a metabolite and not the drug itself.
It might be that they don't really have an blood test for specific traces but have an correlation between the presence of stress hormones and people suffering the symptoms which only really proves that the involved people are not lying about feeling sick, it don't really answer the "illness ray" vs "post traumatic stress" question.
Stresses can do all sorts of things, change gene expression, trigger proteins or breakdown products, etc, etc. All of those things can produce measurable changes.
[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21392516/
The problem is that those are almost exactly the same kind of processes that theoretically could result in an "illness ray" leaving traces in the bloodstream.
A big problem here is probably that the US government haven't yet fully internalized how real PSTD and other stress related symptoms are, and is still treating it as if kind of "fake" especially when it comes to paying for treatments. so the people campaigning for getting the victims help is forced to push some sci-fy inspired illness ray theory.
Given the ever growing info streams pumping ever growing amounts of BS into their heads 24x7, its quite possible the brains Shannon Limit has been breached, which would mean ever increasing errors in what the brain perceives.
> If there exist an blood test as the article claim it's should point to an chemical source rather then an electromagnetic source of the illness
That’s not true - an EM attack could conceivably affect the blood chemistry directly (radiation can destroy proteins and cause complex organic reactions). But the symptoms themselves will also leave biomarkers that can be picked up - hormones, transmitters, etc. Even if it was a case of mass hysteria you could probably design a low-sensitivity blood test around it.
It’s curious that so far it has only been reported to affect American personnel, but you’d imagine an adversary would have many adversarial targets from and in different counties, unless we suspect we are specially targeted and then mostly low level personnel?
I mean, where's the device? The last time they came out with evidence, it was a recording of crickets ...
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-e...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange
Just look at where YC gets a lot of their capital from. It's really sad as a non-American to see how your own fellow citizens actively seek to undermine the values of your country for personal enrichment.
Good article on it: https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...
If you wanted to bootstrap a mass psychogenic illness, it'd be harder to come up with a better scenario. You have civilian employees of the US government living out of their comfort zone, in a foreign country that is putatively "the enemy". You're eating unfamiliar foods, sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings, and all the while being told to be on constant alert for the dangers posed by your host country.
> And the reports are very specific and not vague
Some may be specific, but you're significantly overselling this. There are inconsistencies in both the reports of the affected individuals and what data has been allowed to be released by the US government.
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2021/03/nas-report-on-havana-s...
I recommend giving that GQ article a full read if you haven't (https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...). It goes into a lot of detail and isn't just some fluff piece. Their sources also claim to have identified FSB personnel near victims at the times of the attacks using the same method Bellingcat used to track and locate Navalny's FSB assassins (leaked telco geolocation data purchased on the black market), as well. That alone doesn't necessarily mean anything beyond surveillance, but it's interesting.
I absolutely could be wrong and it could all turn out to be a mass psychogenic episode. But I'd put my money on there being something here, even if I have no clue what it is. (It could be something as "mundane" as poison or some kind of harmful aerosol.)
This is likely propaganda that you've been had by. No, I don't have political views that inform this opinion.
>Much of the information we used for our investigations could never be found in most Western countries, but in Russia, is readily available either for free or a fairly modest fee.
They tracked FSB agents' geolocation positions using this data. Note these are just random private citizens with no special access to anything or anyone.
From the GQ article:
>The most compelling evidence, however, came from publicly available data. As has been widely reported, mobile phones track people’s movements, and location-data companies accumulate this information and sell it. Using this sort of data, CIA investigators were able to deduce the whereabouts of Russian agents, and place them in close physical proximity to the CIA officers at the time they had been attacked when they were in Poland, Georgia, Australia, and Taiwan. In each case, individuals believed to be FSB agents were within range of the CIA officers who had been hit in 2019. In two of the incidents, location data apparently showed FSB agents in the same hotel at the same time their targets experienced the onset of symptoms.
>When I asked Polymeropoulos about the CIA investigation, he said that it was conducted after he retired and that, because he did not have direct knowledge of it, he could not comment on it. He did say, however, that it would not be difficult to use the same techniques, analyzing publicly available data, that had been used by organizations like Bellingcat, which have employed similar methods to expose Russian operations in Europe. “Anyone can buy the cell-phone data on the open market, and you can see where people went,” Polymeropoulos explained. “And perhaps the reason why it seems to have worked is because, just like you saw with all of the GRU activities, they’re sloppy.” GRU machinations were discovered because officers had made several embarrassing missteps, like leaving behind taxi receipts that showed their starting address as GRU headquarters. In the case of the microwave attacks, it seemed FSB operatives had brought their phones with them while carrying out their missions—typically a no-no in the world of covert operations. “There’s ways intelligence officers cover their tracks,” Polymeropoulos marveled. “If I’m going off to do something like that, I’m not taking my phone. It’s insane. It’s so sloppy.”
Definitely could be CIA propaganda. But as Polymeropoulos explains, if Bellingcat could do it, the CIA definitely could, too. Maybe Bellingcat could even retroactively try to confirm this, perhaps.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fighting-crisis/2020...
https://reason.com/2020/09/01/the-feds-who-made-americas-fen...
In these cases, the symptoms always come on totally unexpectedly and abruptly, and immediately dissipate if the victim walks away and return if they return. And they just so happen to only occur in Havana and Moscow rooms with American and Canadian spies and diplomats (aka probably undercover spies, in many cases) in them, with the exception of these three reported DC/Virginia cases.
I could write like a whole 20 page essay on this with all the circumstantial evidence that makes me think it's likely legit. I recommend reading that GQ article in full if you haven't (https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...).
I think it's likely some percentage of these cases are psychogenic, and it's even more likely for the DC cases, but I think it's more likely than not that a lot of them are real. It definitely might not be some kind of microwave weapon, but whether it's just some kind of noxious chemical or some crazy invention, I'd bet on it being real and deliberate. I'm a very skeptical person and tend not to buy conspiracy theories like these, but I think there's enough substance at this point to consider it likely, IMO.
https://youtu.be/fq17HUxkTZ8
He also discusses the fact that apparently, after geofencing the area around the attacks, there is a known Russian agent in the proximity of the victim every time.
I take all of this with a grain of salt; I find it difficult to trust any intelligence agency without a healthy dose of skepticism, but quite interesting nonetheless.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5jTbsvd3rA
The first case listed here just says "headaches and sleep trouble," buddy, I have that twice a week. I'm no expert but I'm inclined to believe the intelligence apparatus is on some overeager pattern matching.
I wonder if it could be coming from their own infrastructure - some side effect of an active RF shield or whatever.
It links to an article about Havana Syndrome, which I assume gives more detailed symptoms, but that’s not the point. An article describing a mysterious “syndrome” should have the symptoms front and centre, not hidden at the end of the article or behind a link. It’s very poor journalism in my opinion