Didnt we just have a thread full of people laughing at how made up this disease was? Wasn’t there some report about that previously, just maybe a month ago? And this “report” seems to be by 3 news organizations.
Interesting to see how this story is now being propagated throughout the media, accruing credibility along the way.
Prior to the 60 minutes documentary, the latest on this story was that in March 2023, 7 US intelligence agencies reported that "available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents" and that a foreign adversary's involvement was "very unlikely"
Hard to guess if that means the reporting is based on propaganda to make Russia look bad vs. US agencies not wanting to admit to the world that Russia has a weapon they can't yet protect against. Both seem equally plausible to me.
For this to be “equally plausible” you’d first have to offer a plausible hypothesis of how such a weapon could operate. Last time this came up nothing even remotely plausible was offered.
I'm no expert on weaponry but isn't there a long history of countries inventing weapons that other countries assumed weren't possible until they saw their use?
> the collective West is unable to even hypothesize the nature of over the course of 8 years of investigation
Another hypothesis is that 'the west' is unable or unwilling to publicly disclose what they found, maybe to not further escalate the conflict.
> manufacture consent ahead of $60B “foreign aid” vote
Consent for what? Is the foreign aid vote a referendum?
You seem very passionate about this subject and judging by some of your previous comments on the matter you are holding a heavy bias. I don't believe there is any argument or piece of proof to change your view. Therefore, I don't believe it's worth for anyone to engage with you on this subject. Just wanted to call this out.
Are you certain I’m the one with the “bias” here? Let me quote ODNI from a couple of year ago: “ There is no one explanation for these incidents. Instead, there are many different possible causes including environmental as well as social factors and preexisting medical conditions.” Unless you believe that ODNI is full of Putin stooges, there isn’t a lot of room for any “bias” tinfoil here.
> Are you certain I’m the one with the “bias” here?
yes
> Let me quote ODNI from a couple of year ago:
Keywords 'couple of years ago'. Maybe it sounds shocking to some, but things can change over a couple of years, stuff can be researched, new data points can appear or dissapear, presidents get voted out, empires rise and fall within a couple of years.
Ok but what does the ODNI say in 2024? A couple of years ago they said 'There is no one explanation for these incidents', so basically 'we don't know'. Has there been an update?
JAMA does not seem to rule out foul play, they're just saying they haven't found significant differences between control and treatment groups with regards to bio markers "except for self-reported and objective measures of imbalance; symptoms of fatigue, posttraumatic stress, and depression; and the development of functional neurological disorders in some", which is something that can be said for a lot of 'syndromes' in medical literature, syndromes that are very much real ("A syndrome is a recognizable complex of symptoms and physical findings which indicate a specific condition for which a direct cause is not necessarily understood."). Not sure if you're old enough to remember, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_syndrome suffered from similar information battles.
So, I'm not sure I follow your arguments here, none of your quotes actually sustain your assertions.
And why is JAMA 'far less likely' to make things up vs the ODNI? What are your arguments about that statement?
Next I suppose you'll be proposing that all these random crashes and ransomware attacks are because of some stealth RCE in some low-level library that's used by 80% of the opensource ecosystem?
Sheeple!
In case my sarcasm is too subtle...
The root cause of these issues is not known. There's some obvious value to having an undisclosed attack against "enemy agents" that's difficult to detect but that disables a very difficult to replace resource of "the enemy"
There's every reason to believe that, for instance, if polonium vlad had access to such a tool he'd use it as much as possible.
There's no concrete evidence of such a tool besides lots of incapacitated public servants / deep-state-bureaucrats (depending on your perspective?).
If you look at the tedious nonsense you have to go through to join the foreign services, and how hard it is to actually get in, and how long it takes to get a station somewhere... I doubt anyone would play that long game just so they could then fake some illness when they could just fall off a ladder at their local supermarket.
Similarly, if you've got some hypersonic death ray that incapacitates people from a distance and you can use it with impunity, why not use it on people who may or may not be in an adversary's intelligence service but are definitely employed by an adversary's government? Even if you get caught, what are they going to do, complain?
I don't particularly think that it is little-green-men with a sonic blaster, but I also don't particularly think it's just complaining complainers making crap up. It's a mystery and I'm interested in finding the answer. I'm certainly not "smart enough" to know something nobody else knows..
21 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 57.8 ms ] threadPrior to the 60 minutes documentary, the latest on this story was that in March 2023, 7 US intelligence agencies reported that "available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents" and that a foreign adversary's involvement was "very unlikely"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome
Another hypothesis is that 'the west' is unable or unwilling to publicly disclose what they found, maybe to not further escalate the conflict.
> manufacture consent ahead of $60B “foreign aid” vote
Consent for what? Is the foreign aid vote a referendum?
You seem very passionate about this subject and judging by some of your previous comments on the matter you are holding a heavy bias. I don't believe there is any argument or piece of proof to change your view. Therefore, I don't believe it's worth for anyone to engage with you on this subject. Just wanted to call this out.
yes
> Let me quote ODNI from a couple of year ago:
Keywords 'couple of years ago'. Maybe it sounds shocking to some, but things can change over a couple of years, stuff can be researched, new data points can appear or dissapear, presidents get voted out, empires rise and fall within a couple of years.
JAMA does not seem to rule out foul play, they're just saying they haven't found significant differences between control and treatment groups with regards to bio markers "except for self-reported and objective measures of imbalance; symptoms of fatigue, posttraumatic stress, and depression; and the development of functional neurological disorders in some", which is something that can be said for a lot of 'syndromes' in medical literature, syndromes that are very much real ("A syndrome is a recognizable complex of symptoms and physical findings which indicate a specific condition for which a direct cause is not necessarily understood."). Not sure if you're old enough to remember, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_syndrome suffered from similar information battles.
So, I'm not sure I follow your arguments here, none of your quotes actually sustain your assertions.
And why is JAMA 'far less likely' to make things up vs the ODNI? What are your arguments about that statement?
Sheeple!
In case my sarcasm is too subtle...
The root cause of these issues is not known. There's some obvious value to having an undisclosed attack against "enemy agents" that's difficult to detect but that disables a very difficult to replace resource of "the enemy"
There's every reason to believe that, for instance, if polonium vlad had access to such a tool he'd use it as much as possible.
There's no concrete evidence of such a tool besides lots of incapacitated public servants / deep-state-bureaucrats (depending on your perspective?).
If you look at the tedious nonsense you have to go through to join the foreign services, and how hard it is to actually get in, and how long it takes to get a station somewhere... I doubt anyone would play that long game just so they could then fake some illness when they could just fall off a ladder at their local supermarket.
Similarly, if you've got some hypersonic death ray that incapacitates people from a distance and you can use it with impunity, why not use it on people who may or may not be in an adversary's intelligence service but are definitely employed by an adversary's government? Even if you get caught, what are they going to do, complain?
I don't particularly think that it is little-green-men with a sonic blaster, but I also don't particularly think it's just complaining complainers making crap up. It's a mystery and I'm interested in finding the answer. I'm certainly not "smart enough" to know something nobody else knows..
See also: Lyme Disease; ulcers
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39889517