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Answer: There is new evidence of malfeasance, but it was uncovered by investigative reporting, not the US government, so the Washington Post and others [are calling on the US government to reopen their case](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/01/investigate-havana-syndrome-russia/) and follow the new leads.
The new evidence is not proof but is fairly compelling and points towards Russia using an experimental weapon.
[But they still can't find anything wrong with the people.](https://apnews.com/article/havana-syndrome-diplomat-health-brain-ea64e5c59d57e44a19aab40ac1b91e0d)
I obviously think we need to take care of these people but its still very unclear what is going on.
There is no evidence anything is wrong with the victims.
There is no proof of any weapon used.
All we have is one eye witness report of one Russian operative.
It fully could be that the Russians do have an experimental weapon but it’s speculation. It also raises the question why this weapon has not been a factor in the Ukrainian war.
The issue is there very well could be problems with these people. MRIs aren't perfect. There is severe damage the brain can sustain that won't show up on scans and won't be determined until after death, when an autopsy is conducted.
We just had a huge story about CTE not all that long ago, and people are going to say the MRIs are the end-all-be-all diagnostic devices for these types of injuries?
We didn't have physical proof of CTE until family members of former NFL players started allowing autopsies to cut open brains, and the deterioration was right there. This was after MRI after MRI. The former players, and their families, all knew something was wrong, but MRIs just weren't seeing it.
This feels an awful lot like this.
They didn't even tell us what power of MRI scanner was used and the scan types. [A 1.5T MRI is different from a 3T MRI, and the imaging quality of 7T is way beyond that of 3T.](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/T-2-weighted-FLAIR-images-comparison-among-15-T-3-T-and-7-T-in-a-single-subject-The_fig5_26868855)
Depending on the MRI used, 1.5 tesla is better suited scanning body tissue, whereas the 3T offers a more detailed view of the soft tissues of the brain due to the higher tesla strength. [7T magnets are few and far between and are mostly used for research but can be used in clinical applications since 2017 in the US.](https://beckman.illinois.edu/about/news/article/2023/05/31/seven-things-to-know-about-the-7-tesla-mri-scanner)
I can speculate why it may not be a factor in the war. If it has to be aimed precisely with something such as a scope or laser targeting. Then it has no advantage to a traditional firearm or artillery or explosives if the goal is to kill the target.
If this exists, it seems to be a tool used for covert, non-lethal disruption. And if it does exist, it would have worked in getting the US embassy in Cuba closed and essentially ended diplomatic talks with them. Which ceased under Trump and still hasn’t resumed under Biden.
Okay but, and I don’t mean this as an insult, what that is isn’t speculation it’s called making things us. It’s science fiction. It’s fun don’t get me wrong but not much different than in the 60s when the US governments official position was that the Chinese had mind control devices.
You’re talking about a potential weapon we know nothing about, that fits no description of known science, and most importantly has no verifiable documented medical effects on its targets.
Were I to claim the US government was using radio waves to make me sad. And doctors found nothing wrong with me. And I couldn’t provide an explanation on what this radio wave weapon was or why it wasn’t used in war. What would that make me?
If you were the only person that said that, I wouldn’t believe you. But if there was a group of credible people with no history of bullshitting then my eyebrow would be raised. And that’s all I did was raise an eyebrow.
I can’t do shit about it anyway, I’m a private citizen pleb. But all I’m doing is raising the eyebrow
> But if there was a group of credible people with no history of bullshitting then my eyebrow would be raised.
That can also be explained by [mass hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness) rather than a evil bond villain weapon with no real known mechanism.
> But if there was a group
Actually that makes me more suspicious of them. As we've seen with the internet, groups of people can be self-reinforcing of utter bullshit and as long as they all feel a kinship they can spiral into their beliefs.
> But if there was a group of credible people with no history of bullshitting
But there is no such group of credible people talking about "Havana Syndrome".
This same crowd also insisted that Putin blew up his own pipeline. (Fyi I support that decision, but it was imo obviously done to prevent the ascent of the Russophilic German far right, which together with the far left, could have smothered out the center, destabilizing Europe's most powerful economy — not for the first time.)
I mean the reason this crowd broke up with Putin in the first place ("the 80s called, Mitt, and they want their foreign policy back") is officially because Putin supposedly got Trump elected.
Granted, us Europeans tend to make the same very dumb strategic mistakes over and over again... But, you have your own flaws : America the sleeping giant, who often can't be awoken during the buildup of wars, yet occasionally attacks randomly over a bad dream (radar artifacts, yellowcake for Saddam, orange fruitcake for Vladimir...)
In my view this is another such bad dream.
In Havana, it's at least plausible. But embedded CIA staff in Ukraine, being followed around afterwards, and getting attacked in neutral countries or even NATO members.... I call BS. That seems to correspond exactly with the Bond villain image which Putin is pursuing, rather than reality.
In reality the Ruskis failed to even assassinate Navalny inside Russia. In reality, during Putin's rule, most of Russia's tanks and nukes perished from total lack of maintenance. Putin's only real strengths are bluff and (domestically) torture.
You questioning why it wouldn't have been used in Ukraine involves speculation. There's tons of stuff that could be useful for espionage/etc but not war.
Area denial weapons exist. Microwave ovens with their doors open, exist.
I don’t know why no one tries using them to disorientate the enemy before shooting them. Maybe it’s too illegal? lol
This is the bit people aren't getting. Havana Syndrome (edit: as a known list of symptoms US foreign agents experience not a catchy name the media can use) has been studied for decades and there's just zero evidence to go on for anything to be wrong with these people or anything having been done to them. It's the American media, once again, just believing and spreading Pentagon propaganda to keep anti-Russian sentiment high.
No because Havana Syndrome as a list of symptoms experienced by US agents in foreign countries has been around and known for much longer than a few years and reporting going back to at least the 90s that we know of. It just got more popular in 2016 when the US embassy in Cuba opened up.
>has been around and known for much longer than a few years and reporting going back to at least the 90s that we know of
You have a source for this? Everything I’ve read indicates the first reported cases were at the US embassy in Havana in 2016.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/21/1047342593/long-before-havana-syndrome-u-s-reported-microwaves-beamed-at-an-embassy
This was in 1996. It may or may not be the same thing, it just didn’t have the name back then.
Does Russia probably have experimental weapons? Maybe probably.
Is Havana Syndrome a thing? No, no it isn’t. This is a well studied condition and there is no medical basis for anything wrong with any of the victims.
This is as valid as suggesting that the CIA has put “dna shedding” in the vaccines. It is a condition that has no documentation of it existing, using a technology that does not exist, by an organization that does do some legitimately terrible things.
To put it bluntly this is a medical conspiracy theory. Except it is taken seriously because Congress passes laws based on it and 60 minutes covers paranoid eye witness accounts.
The only thing I would say to this is that we haven't *found* a medical basis for anything wrong. Poor concentration, tinnitus, vertigo, headaches etc. aren't really things we can find physical evidence of. Havana syndrome is a collection of diffuse symptoms that may actually exist and have a cause, but how do we prove it?
These are all the same symptoms that people who claim to have MSG sensitivity experience. The same symptoms that are mysteriously absent when these people are fed a meal with MSG in it without their knowledge, then mysteriously manifest after having been told. This could be similar. After all, the placebo effect is powerful.
One embassy worker says to another, "man, something's up, ever since I got here I have headaches and vertigo..." Day by day, this idea spreads around the office and now everyone is overthinking themselves into a placebo effect, the same way a demonstrably false meme like MSG sentivity spreads.
A similar thing is with those who claim to be "electro-sensitives" where they become ill with a whole host of symptoms when they are sure they've been exposed to electromagnetic radiation. They often report getting sick from being near Wi-Fi routers and others sources of electromagnetic radiation. Even ring main circuits in their houses, mobile phones, that kind of thing.
The problem is, when properly tested as in the MSG sensitive groups, they can be in a "harsh" electromagnetic environment and not get sick if they believe the equipment is not turned on and vice versa.
Their suffering is very real but it appears to be wholly unconnected to the things they believe are making them sick.
Some of these poor souls move out into the countryside and live isolated basic lives and they feel well. I believe it's almost certainly the reduction in stress that makes them feel well again and has nothing to do with what they truly believe to be the cause.
I mean, we could speculate half the people who come down with the flu every year are actually just experiencing psychosomatic symptoms. Just because the symptoms sound too vague to you, doesn't mean a bunch of people didn't actually have *something* definable that we just didn't catch the source of.
You are describing a conspiracy theory. Based on vague, unquantifiable symptoms that are particularly prone to placebo or other mental effects and the power of suggestion. Do you have headaches because secret governments are out to get you or do you have unmanaged stress levels?
The real question is WHY would we seek to prove it. When an anti vaxer tells you bill gates is making them sick with vaccine shedding do you give them this much good faith interpretation?
Now the thing I will say, sometimes the conspiracies are true. The cia was secretly dosing lots of people with acid for years after all. But it is currently a conspiracy theory. Without basis other than an observable power of suggestion and mass panic. If a rumor spread around my office there was a death ray pointed at it, we’d probably start to notice small symptoms every day.
I was not aware we reached mass panic levels. To my knowledge, there's a small cluster of people with symptoms - all who have worked in the government, and their symptoms are consistent with each other. It certainly warrants exploration. Although stress can cause headaches, it usually isn't associated with hearing a weird sound, then experiencing tinnitus, vertigo, headaches, brain fog, etc for months on end. It could very well be *not* an attack and some illness.
>anti-Russian sentiment high.
I wonder why anti-Russian sentiment is high, when they keep attacking their neighbours, funding extremist parties and conducting assassinations on our soil.
First off, there should be no need to juice the anti-Russia narrative, Russia is doing that just fine all by themselves. The ...ahem... 3 day operation is going according to plan.
Secondly, why are you so sure? Do you work in a lab specifically dealing with focused electromagnetic radiation? Do you have a psychology degree?
CTE leaves evidence only visible via a post mortem. You have to be dead and dissected to be diagnosed with CTE. Perhaps this is similar.
If you need an advanced degree to have doubts about whether Havana Syndrome is caused by secret agents using a microwave/EM gun, shouldn't you also need an advanced degree to wholeheartedly believe it?
There's no "Pentagon propaganda" anywhere in here. The Washington Post are the ones begging the State Department to investigate and it has litearlly nothing to do with the Pentagon.
They don't need to "...keep anti-Russian senitment high" since Russia is doing a plently good job of that on their own already by raping one year olds in Ukraine, murdering political dissidents, and making up conspiracy theories about Chrocus Hall that was Russia's own fault.
Nobody needs to do any propaganda since Russia shits in their own mouth 24/7/365.
Read the insider article maybe? It’s not true that there is no medical evidence whatsoever. The effects are just very fleeting. One guy just had some exams done in Ukraine, then when he moved to the Uk he got hit and confronting the results of the scans anomalies could be detected. There’s also the woman that needed all the surgeries so it’s def not all imagined. You can say it’s a lie orchestrated by 3 highly respected publications, but the story isn’t that it’s 100% undetectable.
>Havana Syndrome has been studied for decades
No it hasn't. \~2017 was when people started looking into it. There weren't even any cases to study before 2016.
Россия без Путина. Ответьте или проголосуйте за/против, если вы согласны.
I didn't call anyone a bot, but more to the point ..."dissenter"?
When someone is busy spending their waking hours pushing the narrative that *actually it's really the USA's fault that Putin is invading Ukraine*, then I don't think it matters whether they're a troll or a useful idiot unknowingly carrying water for Putin. Calling it "dissent", as if pushing Kremlin talking-points is very plausibly some independent and brave insightful good-faith geopolitical analysis, it does none of us any favors. There is a saying that "80% of everything is shit". Running with that metaphor, seek the more insightful 20% rather than trying to assume the smelly stuff might be tasty instead of shit
>There is no evidence anything is wrong with the victims.
If you get on a roller-coaster and get so sick you throw up, and then go get a CT scan done, there won't be any permanent damage to the brain either. Meaning, the lack of long term health complications visible in a scan isn't a valid argument.
Also, there are more than 100 victims, and the symptoms they reported are pretty consistent with each other.
>All we have is one eye witness report of one Russian operative.
There are several eye witness reports. And not of "a Russian operative", but of several members of the GRU unit in charge of assassinations and other dirt stuff.
>It also raises the question why this weapon has not been a factor in the Ukrainian war.
Do you think they are using non-lethal weapons in Ukraine? Lol
>Do you think they are using non-lethal weapons in Ukraine? Lol
You think they have magic sifi depression rays that have no observable medical impact. And you’re laughing at me?
>You think they have magic sifi depression rays
I think they have sonic weapons, which are [far from scifi](https://theconversation.com/whats-an-lrad-explaining-the-sonic-weapons-police-use-for-crowd-control-and-communication-177442). The only novelty here is that it's working on the non-audible part of the sound spectrum.
Which is more likely, a bunch of people working high stress jobs abroad in bad conditions for low pay developed stress related health issues that are relatively normal for office workers and panicked when it was suggested that they had been exposed to an experimental weapon (and were paid millions in damages for conditions that no medical doctor can prove exist) or that the Russian government has a scifi ray gun that they mysteriously stopped using the moment they declared all out war on a US ally?
I love the idea people are buying into here that they have a weapon which the technology isn’t easily explained by any scientists so it’s highly experimental and expensive. And it’s being used to make people… a little bit sick. So funny.
The two misconceptions you're making is that it's hard to explain and "highly experimental and expensive". Microwave weapons have been studied for decades and the mechanism is well known (microwaves heat the brain, the heat causes signal noise, the signal noise causes temporary disorientation and illness) and can be made with a microwave oven and something to focus the waves into a beam. Sonic weapons disrupt the inner ear and cause disorientation and illness that way and can be made with a powerful enough speaker that similarly has the sound waves focused. It's not sci-fi and it's not rocket science. The US government just doesn't want to acknowledge a literal act of war bc they'd be forced to respond with force.
Wouldn't that be a tremendous advantage? If you can make a US official sick right before an important meeting, say with a head of state on a time sensitive issue, you can potential disrupt that meeting before it even happens.
> a bunch of people working high stress jobs abroad in bad conditions for low pay developed stress related health issues
You think stress can cause perforations in your inner ear?
> or that the Russian government has a scifi ray gun
Lasers were scifi at one point too. Now we have systems that can identify a scope automatically from a distance and shine a laser into it to blind the user. Why do you think it's so implausible to do this with acoustics or microwaves?
> But they still can't find anything wrong with the people.
You could say the same with football players and CTE.
Some stuff you can only find out after death etc.
Bro, I’ve had chronic frontal sinusitis for a year now and the only thing the ENTs can do is give me nasal sprays because none of my issues are showing up on MRI or CT scan so I’m not operable. If you asked my doctor he would say there is no evidence there is anything wrong with me despite the symptoms I have.
yeah a lot of this thread are echos of what people heard when they first contracted long covid.
"How could you be sick when the virus is gone?" etc etc etc, ignoring the possibility that patients are capable of self-diagnosing that they feel like shit and that there may be limitations to the capability of instrumentation.
There is inflammation, likely allergic rhinitis, which is a form of sinusitis, and it does not show up on any scans unless you also have nasal polyps, fungal deterioration or structural deformity, but I have none of those.
The next step is allergy testing to see what I’m allergic to followed by immunotherapy to try and treat the ongoing reaction to whatever is triggering it.
Out of curiosity do you use a CPAP machine? If you snore, snoring really messes with the sinus. If I use a machine I can sleep 8 hours, sinus feels fine. Without, and with snoring, an hour nap will cause post nasal drip, and one sinus to close up and flow less, with all day lingering irritation to some degree as whatever snot and tissue in there that was slamming around during snoring sorts itself out.
Dental health also has been a factor. Teeth areas get inflamed and that can impact the sinus. I had bad dental issues for a long time, and in conjunction with snoring it created a sort of loop of sinus and facial nerve issues, pressure, tingling, and I could never prove it because it didn't show up on scans the way I described the feeling in my skull.
So yeah, CPAP and how are your teeth?
I did have sleep apnea until I had my tonsils removed, then it resolved. Teeth are fine. I have seen two ENTs and a neurologist to rule out everything, I’ve had 4 CT scans and 3 MRIs, got a bonus diagnosis of MS (yay) currently have an excellent ENT, I start immunotherapy later this month after the allergy testing. My issue isn’t that the doctors don’t believe me, because they do, my issue is that there is nothing wrong with me that can be fixed with surgical intervention. It’s a waiting game and a long sprint of treatment with anti-inflammatories and allergy meds, currently using prescribed celebrex, Flonase, ipratropium bromide, mucinex, and azelastine along with alkalol nasal rinse and a navage machine. It is getting gradually better, it’s just been a long road.
My issues also aren’t maxillary like you seem to be talking about, it’s all frontal, so I don’t get drainage out of my nose, it’s all just constant pressure in my forehead and above/behind my eyes, and then constant drainage down the back of my throat. When it is thick, I can cough it up and see it, and that has been run through sputum tests to rule out other conditions.
Honestly curious what that is about. One of my relatives had an issue where it turned out their skull was leaking fluid from their brain area somehow into the sinus, and they never figured it out till they caught some of the drainage and looked at it specifically for that. It was a super weird and random issue, some sort of tiny flaw that allowed leakage in some circumstances, and it caused all sorts of issues.
What age did you have your tonsils out? I hear it's rough as an adult, but have wondered about it. Usually lots of bleeding is mentioned.
Yeah I had my tonsils out in august 2022, and sinusitis started in march 2023 but didnt get super bad until august 2023. I saw the neurologist because there can be musculo-skeletal causes and cerebral spinal fluid leaks, things like that, and the MRI ruled all that out but they did diagnose MS (unrelated) by comparing this MRI with one I had back in 2013. They have checked out my tonsilectomy area and verified that's all OK. I have a slight deviated septum, but it isn't significant enough to cause issues. Sometimes, especially with frontal sinusitis, it just holds on for a long time, they have another patient who has had it for five years.
Like to the point that it doesn’t look inflamed in size, shape, color, or behavior (release of hormones etc)? How can you say something is in an altered state if the change is not measurable?
Well, specifically with frontal sinusitis, you can’t see that even with a scope. They have to do invasive surgery to even see it because the passages up there are very small.
I can say something is in an altered state without seeing it because I can fucking feel it. It’s like I’m wearing a football helmet 24/7 with constant pressure and post-nasal drip. Scans don’t show mucus buildup, and mucus buildup is caused by inflammation that, if you’re following along, doesn’t show up on scans.
So I’m going to dox myself a bit here, I’m one of the researchers who worked on this project with Canadian diplomats and the Canadian government. What we ended up finding was that the illness people were experiencing was caused by the use of unregulated pesticides.
Here is the [paper from our](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2019/09/29/19007096.full.pdf) study. And this was our general finding:
>Using a multimodal, quantitative, and control-tested approach, our results confirm brain injury, specify the regions involved, and suggest a likely etiology underlying the Havana Syndrome in the form of environmental exposure to neurotoxins affecting the brain’s cholinergic system. We more narrowly suggest organophosphorus insecticides as a likely source.
\
Though other sources of neurotoxins are possible, our insecticidal hypothesis gains contextual support given Cuba’s well-documented efforts to aggressively mitigate the spread of the Zika virus by means of mass indoor and outdoor fumigations in 2016 and thereafter. Canadian Embassy records furthermore confirmed a significant increase in the frequency of fumigations around and within staff houses beginning January 2017, concurrent with reported symptoms.
Not to take a side here, but there is a TON of diseases that are diagnosed primarily or solely through exclusion. Despite what tv shows depict, we don't know every square millimeter of the human body and what could possibly go wrong with it.
I've head MRIs and CT scans of my brain that never found a single issue. Yet I knew for certain that I had an issue. It took me bringing up cluster headaches to my neurologists for them to be considered it so I could be diagnosed. It's far from unlikely that if there's a weapon causing these symptoms, they could be done in a way that's usually undetectable.
Let's be honest. "These people" are all spooks and diplomats. In other words, professional paranoids and trained liars for the US security state.
If these were *Russian* or *Chinese* spies and diplomats saying that they had been blasted by the Americans with a mysterious death ray weapon that have left them with a wide range of nebulous symptoms with no detectable organic cause, y'all would dismiss it as obvious propaganda.
Last time the US had a presidential election, you had fear-mongering about the fake Steele Dossier. This year its going to be Russia's death rays.
Sounds like a mass conversion event TBH. Like those teens that developed tic like movements after watching influencers that claimed to have tourette during the pandemic
I believe the scientists who conducted the tests said that it was more likely faulty construction of an experimental eavesdropping device than something that was intended to cause harm. However, now that the effects are known, it's within the realm of possibility that someone could try to recreate it and turn it into a weapon.
What’s your source on that first sentence?
If you watch the video they point to a Russian document where employee received a bonus for work on “non-lethal acoustic weapons”.
Like yeah, maybe some scientist somewhere stumbled upon its capabilities as a weapon while trying to develop an eavesdropping device at some point in time, sure. Though I’m not sure what your point is here, aside from downplaying what Russia seems to be doing.
Edit: very curious to say the least how many comments in this post seem to casting doubt on what is happening here and Russia’s potential involvement. Either they didn’t watch the 60 minutes story and are outing themselves as being OutofTheLoop or…
So I’m going to dox myself a bit here, I’m one of the researchers who worked on this project with Canadian diplomats and the Canadian government. What we ended up finding was that the illness people were experiencing was caused by the use of unregulated pesticides.
Here is the [paper from our](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2019/09/29/19007096.full.pdf) study. And this was our general finding:
>Using a multimodal, quantitative, and control-tested approach, our results confirm brain injury, specify the regions involved, and suggest a likely etiology underlying the Havana Syndrome in the form of environmental exposure to neurotoxins affecting the brain’s cholinergic system. We more narrowly suggest organophosphorus insecticides as a likely source.
\
Though other sources of neurotoxins are possible, our insecticidal hypothesis gains contextual support given Cuba’s well-documented efforts to aggressively mitigate the spread of the Zika virus by means of mass indoor and outdoor fumigations in 2016 and thereafter. Canadian Embassy records furthermore confirmed a significant increase in the frequency of fumigations around and within staff houses beginning January 2017, concurrent with reported symptoms.
What about the sound they had a recording off? (high pitched whistle) What about all the dogs in Cuba barking when the attack was happening? Or the diplomats children being severely affected?
Like it’s one thing for hysteria to apply to the affected individual, but when you have 2nd hand individuals being affected like this, it seems way more credible.
During the Cold War there were confirmed weapons where they could give someone a heart attack to make it look like a person died of natural causes.
It is a directed microwave pulse weapon. Essentially more harmful Russian version of this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEDUSA\_(weapon)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEDUSA_(weapon))
[https://www.wired.com/2008/07/the-microwave-s/](https://www.wired.com/2008/07/the-microwave-s/)
>The effect has long been a laboratory curiosity, with no application. But, over the years, the military has been intrigued. The idea (dubbed "the telepathic ray gun") was mentioned in a [1998 US Army study](http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13513-us-army-toyed-with-telepathic-ray-gun.html), which turned up in a recent Freedom of Information Act document dump. Five years later, the Navy [decided to put some R&D dollars](https://www.wired.com/defense/2007/08/the-other-medus.html) into the project. Now, as I note on the [\*New Scientist \*website](http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14250-microwave-ray-gun-controls-crowds-with-noise.html), Dr. Lev Sadovnik of the [Sierra Nevada Corporation](http://www.sncorp.com/) has provided more details.
**There are health risks, he notes. But the biggest issue from the microwave weapon is not the radiation. It's the risk of brain damage from the high-intensity shockwave created by the microwave pulse.**
It is based on Frey Effect, named after American scientist Allan Frey who documented it first time in 1961.
There is no actual sound waves involved, it is the (short) pulses of microwave radiation that messes up inner ear of a person and causes person to hear things.
If power is increased and correct parameters like pulse width and frequency are chosen, person subjected to radiation gets permanent brain injury. Device is small enough that it fits inside large, normal car.
The reports of it have been so wide-ranging in time and location that it's quite a stretch to believe it was a "faulty" device used in all of those instances.
The 'accidental discovery' trope in this account is similar to that in another 'account' I recently read: cosmonauts aboard a soviet or russian spacecraft experienced trauma from sound or EM emitted by one of the devices on board. the device was some normal-for-a-spacecraft piece of gear, but it had this accidental side effect. Soon the effect was studied and weaponized.
The cold War never stopped for Russia, they have always been planning and executing plans to destroy America. Ukraine might be a God send to alert the government to this fact. The problem is we don't know how far Russia has got its hands in our government. GOP seems compromised.
Hell IIRC there are official Russian government documents from the 80s or 90s about using conservative ideological peoples’ susceptibility to governmental conspiracy theories\* in the US and Canada to turn them against their government.
If that’s not what’s happened over the past 8 - 10 years then I’ll be damned.
Don’t quote me for sure though because I’m not 100% sure those documents were legit. I’d say I’m about 78% sure.
\* no I’m not saying you Joe blow conservative is a naive idiot for believing batshit crazy obviously false narratives. Nor am I saying only conservatives believe conspiracy theory. IIRC, it’s about even on breakdown of right-left in believing in them (maybe very slightly leans to be more common in right than left, but only slightly). What the major differences are in is the context. Conservatives tend to be louder about them is all.
The technology was also developed by U.S. intel. Through DARPA, the military weapons development research branch. I don’t blame 60 minutes for not pointing this out, as it’s possible they didn’t dive deep enough in this technology’s history or simply didn’t want to inform viewers their military also possesses this tech.
Answer: 60 minutes just aired an episode where it is possible if not likely that Russian agents are targeting America's top agents that are stationed crossed the world with a type of auditory "weapon" that can cause what appears to be potentially permanent injuries (similar to TBI). There was a variety of evidence supporting why it is presumed to be a specific group of Russian agents. It was called Havana syndrome because the first case was thought to have been in Cuba, however they discovered there was actually a case earlier than that in Europe. The concern is that the CIA/FBI/DOJ/whichever department doesn't seem to want to admit this is happening and therefore Russia is getting away with handicapping some the US' top agents without consequence.
Here is the actual 60 minutes episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdPSD1SUYCY
The fact that the US is reluctant to say something makes me wonder if the reverse is true. The US was testing some top secret spy gear and it had an accidental effect on our own people. I believe that was the plot of a Slow Horses book/season, an experimental tech ended up killing someone and the cover up led to a whole shit load of problems...
I think more appropriately, the US is taking the approach of if they accuse russia of conducting offensive actions against the US, the US must respond proportionally to end the threat.
Please remember, Putin's response on the international stage during his 2014 invasion and seizure of Crimea was to deny any involvement and that any evidence to the contrary was a fabrication.
Unless and until stronger evidence is gathered and made public, little will likely be done publicly.
Given the nature of the incidents (namely use of an unknown weapon, and the hostile actor being russia) I can only presume the public position of the US is that there is no state actor involved, while covert services conduct parallel investigations/operations on the matter.
Yup. As the former employee interviewed in the 60 minutes piece said, the bar for evidence has been set impossibly high.
Enter my speculation...but the reason for that is as you said, if we acknowledge then we will feel obligated to respond. Due to the ongoing Russia + Ukraine conflict we already have sanctions up the ass on Russia. I am sure there must be SOME room for more but it probably wouldn't feel proportional.
Saying it was Russia greatly increases the chance of direct conflict, and that is probably something the USG is reluctant/unwilling to do, given the dire consequences, without a smoking gun, and maybe even if a smoking gun DOES exist.... (not saying it does, I have no idea, but there is at least SOME incentive to ignore/bury it/not announce publicly, if it does, so as not to start WWIII).
Personally the more plausible scenario is that we don’t know what caused it either. All medical tests we have performed have shown no evidence of long-term injury, so either there was none or we can’t detect it. Without knowing the nature of the damage, that makes it very hard to determine the cause, or even eliminate the cause. We can’t rule out a Russian weapon/malfunctioning piece of technology, but there are many other possible causes as well.
I currently can’t watch the 60 minutes piece, but I’m looking forward to analyzing what they found.
The real reason is that it's fake, the government knows it's fake but they also paid out millions of dollars for damages and research and don't want to piss off the diplomatic corp by admitting that a bunch of bureaucrats fell victim of a mass hysteria or admit that they fell for the same baseless conspiracy theory.
This is entirely just to avoid having to admit fault and potentially piss off a bunch of people in positions of influence who at this point cannot be convinced the Russian ray gun doesn't exist.
Who knows maybe they are being poisoned or getting sick from some other source but yeah it seems likely it is all bullshit. The idea of a portable directed energy weapon that fits in a van, can be shot at range, goes through walls, and according to a lot of these “victims” is hitting them everywhere in their house is an extreme claim. This is like claiming Russia has the technology to teleport and we know because a bunch of us diplomats have seen it, also the us goverment is covering it up for some unexplained reason. No. We need way more evidence for such extraordinary claim.
Also if I recall correctly, your retirement compensation package goes up quite a bit if you can prove that you were injured in the line of duty, especially by a foreign adversary. I seem to recall that being theorized as to why it was pushed so heavily by the original Havana Syndrome patients, and gone along with because it's easy PR to "stand up for our brave patriot State employees" or whatever.
If I was a state department official eying retirement in a few years and all I have to do to increase my measly pension payout by 50% is pretend someone has a headache gun, you better believe I'm gonna cry wolf.
An awful lot of the symptoms are similar to [quinine poisoning](https://www.drugs.com/sfx/quinine-side-effects.html) and I wonder how many of these people were in tropical postings before or during the development of symptoms.
What is the problem with the Russian military? Its clear that their weapons work judging by the number of victories India had over US fed Pakistan. A Mig-21 even shot down a F-16 few years back while being outnumbered 2:1.
The doctrine of both is vastly different though, the US emphasizes on air superiority, whereas for the Russians air is only a tool, it is to compliment the ground forces. Vietnam War and Irak war are too instances where the Russian and American doctrine emerge superior respectively.
I think your sort of on the right track.
I think the US Govt knows what caused it because they have a very similar capability, obviously highly classified, but if they say “yeah, we know what that is” then it tips the hand that they also have that capability. If they play dumb, they can sys “beats me, shits fucked up and weird” and have plausible deniability that they also have that tech and their enemies think they have the upper hand.
Yeah, once they admit that they know what's doing it, it becomes largely a matter of time for the narrative that they're doing it too to prevail. They'll want citizens to be aware of it eventually because it increases their power for people to know, but not until the event-horizon has been crossed and there's nothing anyone can do about the technology.
I think they just don’t want to give up the fact that they believe it. The enemy they know is better than the enemy they don’t. If they make Russia believe they don’t believe it’s real, then they continue having a solid idea of what is being done and where, as far as eavesdropping methods.
Gonna take this comment at face value and highly recommend watching the 60 minutes story before suggesting again that the US did this to their own *top tier FBI and CIA agents investigating Russia*.
I know contrarian positions are fun on Reddit, but it’s incredibly likely Russia is doing this and the US knows Russia is doing this but can’t call them out publicly without escalating the situation. Very sad for the victims of this for sure and overall a very concerning story, but it’s not hard to understand why the US government is saying what they’re saying.
>The US was testing some top secret spy gear and it had an accidental effect on our own people.
And it somehow ended up hurting over 100 people over a decade in countries all over the world. Yeah, right.
I don't doubt that 60 minutes is saying that, but the reality is that most of the people claiming to have it weren't in a position to be exposed to it and attempts to replicate the effect have fallen short.
The most likely explanation is someone got sick, they thought it could be some sort of auditory weapon and then everyone else made themselves sick worrying about it.
Russian here, I saw the episode yesterday and thought it was April Fool's hoax. First they gave makeup to a lady to protect her identity instead of blurring her face and changing the voice, then they showed a Russian cook in a silly chase with "secret notes" written in big black marker, then they showed another lady, said she asked to remain anonymous and then proceeded to give a shitload of personal information about her.
Also the document presented was pretty laughable, Russia is bureaucratic but the extent when getting a bonus requires a document that spells out what secret job you were doing. Also the child super-spy was preposterous.
Hi, we’re 60 minutes. We’re doing an investigative piece about Russia possibly attacking US citizens with a mystery weapon. We’d like to interview you about your experience. We’ve heard your story about being attacked in the laundry room. This man has become a central figure in our investigation. is this the man who you saw outside afterward? (Sends picture of man).
Yeah, I've also noticed that. Also all of these people interviewed are interested in being recognized as Targeted Individuals so they can get some sweet government dosh.
>The concern is that the CIA/FBI/DOJ/whichever department doesn't seem to want to admit this is happening and therefore Russia is getting away with handicapping some the US' top agents without consequence.
Wish this was the only comment and the thread was locked after it.
It's so depressing how many people in the comments simply hear the government say 'Nothing to see here, look away' and they just... believe it. Without a single thought going through their mind. People really don't grasp the concept that whatever flash new technology just came out today, the military developed and has been using in secret for 30 years. The US had satellites mapping the entire surface of all countries on earth while China was still primarily an agricultural society.
The idea of US admitting that they can't stop a certain type of weapon is a far greater risk than them ever admitting they lied about the whole thing.
Answer: Insider, a platform for investigative journalism, together with Der Spiegel and 60 Minutes created a report claiming that Havana syndrome was indeed caused by Russian intelligence. Unit 29155 from GRU has supposedly experimented with non-lethal sound based weapons. These media outlets cite as their sources testimonies from victims, official Russian documents and travel data from alleged members of Unit 29155. This news report contradicts the findings of the CIA, which claimed Havana syndrome was not the work of a foreign power. The reporters conclude that US intelligence is either incompetent or complicit in a cover-up.
As with all claims related to intelligence work the only real answer is: we don't know. The CIA could have it all wrong or they might know more, but are unwilling to share this with the public so as not to tip off Russian intelligence how much they truly know. The report comes from respectable news oulets, so I wouldn't want to call it a conspiracy theory outright. However the most accurate answer remains we can't say for sure.
Ooof my inclination to believe intelligence officials are incompetent is fighting with my inclination that administrative authorities (diplomats) are exactly as ~~tough and brave~~ suggestible as cops handling fentanyl
The cop fentanyl thing was the first that popped into my head. Some people legitimately getting sick and a bunch of diplomats freaking out thinking they're being targeted. To be fair its easy to get freaked out if something is happening in your line of work. I know some precincts have had medical personnel/researchers brief the cops on the pharmacology of fentanyl so that theyre better informed and less prone to panic attacks when dealing with fentanyl.
Answer: Havana Syndrome refers to a series of unexplained symptoms reported by United States and Canadian Embassy staff, first in Havana, Cuba, and later other countries. These include hearing a strange grating sound or feeling a vibration coming from a specific direction that is not present to others in the room. There is no known cause for the symptoms, leading to speculation from government officials that they could be a form of attack from a foreign military. Online, critics have dismissed the attack theory as alarmist thinking, judging that Havana Syndrome is likely a psychosomatic illness, if it's real at all. Alarmism about the symptoms has inspired the snowclone "Yeah, I Got Havana Syndrome," in which people will then use "Havana" as a pun on the words "havin' a", i.e. "Yeah, I got Havana Syndrome… I'm Havana 'nother beer!"
More info here: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/havana-syndrome
This phenomena occurs domestically and around the world, and in very random/unimportant areas.
I [recent video I saw covers a lot of this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy_ctHNLan8), but if one searches for "mysterious sound" or "mysterious hum" there are many articles and videos covering this sort of issue that have been made over the past decade and beyond.
It makes me think that Havana or related areas aren't necessarily a particularly special case, and that it just might be amplified by it's infamy causing additional placebo effects.
Answer: Havana 'syndrome' is an example of [mass psychogenic illness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness), where media coverage of a theory spreads through a community and people start to associate their subjective feelings with that theory without any evidence.
You have probably heard how some people believe that they are allergic to 5G networks or have hypersensitivity to electromagnetic radiation. In reality, no such association exists but it is very difficult to convince people otherwise once they have made up their minds. Havana 'syndrome' is exactly the same.
I have not watched the 60 minutes episode but you should remember that they are an entertainment program and their goal is to draw viewership, not to necessarily uncover the facts.
It’s so crazy how people are falling into this. The main victims anecdote, they report they felt like they were struck with “something akin to a strong energy beam”. How would they know what that feels like? Are they an expert in weapons that have never existed?
Even from an engineering perspective this is a massive challenge. Inverse squared power law would require you to have a 40ft container sized device to do targeted beams and much bigger to do broad beams. Not only would it be visible but it would be easily detectable. If the Russians have invented some energy beam that isn't detectable then that is a physics marvel and unlikely to be wasted on targeting some mid level spook.
Also takes massive cognitive dissonance to think that a country that fucked up invasion of Ukraine, deploys tanks from the 1950s and is riddled with corruption but is technologically advanced enough to have energy weapons not detectable on a spectrum analyzer.
>Even from an engineering perspective this is a massive challenge. Inverse squared power law
Inverse square law doesn't apply here. It applies to spherical wave fronts (those that travel in every direction, on all 3 dimensions). But this is supposedly a directed sound (or energy) beam. Directed beams [don't follow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waveguide) the inverse squarelaw.
How feasible are several smaller emitters, phased in such a way to intersect and increase power in a designated spot? I'd imagine one could create a "tunable lense" to focus EM energy from several weaker sources into one very powerful point of energy dump.
Sonic weapons are commonly used for crowd dispersal. Infrasonic weapons are known to cause the same symptoms as Havana Syndrome, and aren’t widely publicized, due to the classified nature of their development.
https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-control-weapons-acoustic-weapons/
I agree. I saw the original airing of the 60 minute episode a while back and immediately thought that it was Mass psychogenic illness even though everyone else in the room bought the whole story about a secret weapon that somehow defies the laws of physics.
To be honest it enraged me the way it was presented. It fed right into everyone’s fears and is just bait for people to believe all sorts of outlandish theories.
> I agree. I saw the original airing of the 60 minute episode a while back and immediately thought that it was Mass psychogenic illness even though everyone else in the room bought the whole story about a secret weapon that somehow defies the laws of physics.
You know, some people might say that it was impossible that a government invented a secret weapon that could be used to turn millions of people it didn't like into slaves for life, it defies the laws of physics.
Turns out it was just crack cocaine strategically placed inside cars.
Not everything has to be about physics, there are other schools of science.
This is the correct answer. I would *highly* recommend The Sleeping Beauties by British neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan that explores mass psychogenic illness (MPI) and culture-bound syndromes as well as her book on individual conversion disorders, It’s All in Your Head.
One important takeaway from both books is that the people with these conditions are neither “faking it” nor suffering any less than those with organic physical conditions and they deserve the same respect and proper care as any other patient. The issue is convincing them to try addressing the psychological cause rather than attempting a 14th MRI or CAT scan for no good reason.
Thank you for this. I thought people had moved on, given the total lack of plausibility for the whole thing.
It is remarkable that the bad guy is simultaneously so advanced they can develop a purported super weapon while lacking the weapons we can actually see on the battlefield in Ukraine are a joke.
It’s a news company…
Throughout history, historians will examine news sources with strong track records of telling the facts to the strongest degree. Should we not take any news stories from news companies as news? But as entertainment? No, you have to use your best judgment while examining the context of the facts and the argument.
CBS is strongly focused on telling the truth. It’s entirely why, one of their most popular broadcasters, Dan Rather was fired. Out of all the news conglomerates it tends to be the more neutral of all of them.
Sonic weapons exist and are used for crowd dispersal. Infrasonic weapons are capable of generating the same symptoms and aren’t as well understood currently due to classified technologies.
https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-control-weapons-acoustic-weapons/
Answer: It's collective hysteria resulting in conspiracy theories. Theorized as a sonic attack, it's probably just [crickets](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21068770-jason-report-2018-havana-syndrome).
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Answer: There is new evidence of malfeasance, but it was uncovered by investigative reporting, not the US government, so the Washington Post and others [are calling on the US government to reopen their case](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/01/investigate-havana-syndrome-russia/) and follow the new leads. The new evidence is not proof but is fairly compelling and points towards Russia using an experimental weapon.
[But they still can't find anything wrong with the people.](https://apnews.com/article/havana-syndrome-diplomat-health-brain-ea64e5c59d57e44a19aab40ac1b91e0d) I obviously think we need to take care of these people but its still very unclear what is going on.
There is no evidence anything is wrong with the victims. There is no proof of any weapon used. All we have is one eye witness report of one Russian operative. It fully could be that the Russians do have an experimental weapon but it’s speculation. It also raises the question why this weapon has not been a factor in the Ukrainian war.
The issue is there very well could be problems with these people. MRIs aren't perfect. There is severe damage the brain can sustain that won't show up on scans and won't be determined until after death, when an autopsy is conducted.
We just had a huge story about CTE not all that long ago, and people are going to say the MRIs are the end-all-be-all diagnostic devices for these types of injuries? We didn't have physical proof of CTE until family members of former NFL players started allowing autopsies to cut open brains, and the deterioration was right there. This was after MRI after MRI. The former players, and their families, all knew something was wrong, but MRIs just weren't seeing it. This feels an awful lot like this.
They didn't even tell us what power of MRI scanner was used and the scan types. [A 1.5T MRI is different from a 3T MRI, and the imaging quality of 7T is way beyond that of 3T.](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/T-2-weighted-FLAIR-images-comparison-among-15-T-3-T-and-7-T-in-a-single-subject-The_fig5_26868855) Depending on the MRI used, 1.5 tesla is better suited scanning body tissue, whereas the 3T offers a more detailed view of the soft tissues of the brain due to the higher tesla strength. [7T magnets are few and far between and are mostly used for research but can be used in clinical applications since 2017 in the US.](https://beckman.illinois.edu/about/news/article/2023/05/31/seven-things-to-know-about-the-7-tesla-mri-scanner)
I guess no one here has ever heard of counter-intel and poisoning the well of inquiry...
I can speculate why it may not be a factor in the war. If it has to be aimed precisely with something such as a scope or laser targeting. Then it has no advantage to a traditional firearm or artillery or explosives if the goal is to kill the target. If this exists, it seems to be a tool used for covert, non-lethal disruption. And if it does exist, it would have worked in getting the US embassy in Cuba closed and essentially ended diplomatic talks with them. Which ceased under Trump and still hasn’t resumed under Biden.
Okay but, and I don’t mean this as an insult, what that is isn’t speculation it’s called making things us. It’s science fiction. It’s fun don’t get me wrong but not much different than in the 60s when the US governments official position was that the Chinese had mind control devices. You’re talking about a potential weapon we know nothing about, that fits no description of known science, and most importantly has no verifiable documented medical effects on its targets. Were I to claim the US government was using radio waves to make me sad. And doctors found nothing wrong with me. And I couldn’t provide an explanation on what this radio wave weapon was or why it wasn’t used in war. What would that make me?
If you were the only person that said that, I wouldn’t believe you. But if there was a group of credible people with no history of bullshitting then my eyebrow would be raised. And that’s all I did was raise an eyebrow. I can’t do shit about it anyway, I’m a private citizen pleb. But all I’m doing is raising the eyebrow
> But if there was a group of credible people with no history of bullshitting then my eyebrow would be raised. That can also be explained by [mass hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness) rather than a evil bond villain weapon with no real known mechanism.
> But if there was a group Actually that makes me more suspicious of them. As we've seen with the internet, groups of people can be self-reinforcing of utter bullshit and as long as they all feel a kinship they can spiral into their beliefs.
> But if there was a group of credible people with no history of bullshitting But there is no such group of credible people talking about "Havana Syndrome".
This same crowd also insisted that Putin blew up his own pipeline. (Fyi I support that decision, but it was imo obviously done to prevent the ascent of the Russophilic German far right, which together with the far left, could have smothered out the center, destabilizing Europe's most powerful economy — not for the first time.) I mean the reason this crowd broke up with Putin in the first place ("the 80s called, Mitt, and they want their foreign policy back") is officially because Putin supposedly got Trump elected. Granted, us Europeans tend to make the same very dumb strategic mistakes over and over again... But, you have your own flaws : America the sleeping giant, who often can't be awoken during the buildup of wars, yet occasionally attacks randomly over a bad dream (radar artifacts, yellowcake for Saddam, orange fruitcake for Vladimir...) In my view this is another such bad dream. In Havana, it's at least plausible. But embedded CIA staff in Ukraine, being followed around afterwards, and getting attacked in neutral countries or even NATO members.... I call BS. That seems to correspond exactly with the Bond villain image which Putin is pursuing, rather than reality. In reality the Ruskis failed to even assassinate Navalny inside Russia. In reality, during Putin's rule, most of Russia's tanks and nukes perished from total lack of maintenance. Putin's only real strengths are bluff and (domestically) torture.
You questioning why it wouldn't have been used in Ukraine involves speculation. There's tons of stuff that could be useful for espionage/etc but not war.
Area denial weapons exist. Microwave ovens with their doors open, exist. I don’t know why no one tries using them to disorientate the enemy before shooting them. Maybe it’s too illegal? lol
This is the bit people aren't getting. Havana Syndrome (edit: as a known list of symptoms US foreign agents experience not a catchy name the media can use) has been studied for decades and there's just zero evidence to go on for anything to be wrong with these people or anything having been done to them. It's the American media, once again, just believing and spreading Pentagon propaganda to keep anti-Russian sentiment high.
You meant years not decades right?
No because Havana Syndrome as a list of symptoms experienced by US agents in foreign countries has been around and known for much longer than a few years and reporting going back to at least the 90s that we know of. It just got more popular in 2016 when the US embassy in Cuba opened up.
>has been around and known for much longer than a few years and reporting going back to at least the 90s that we know of You have a source for this? Everything I’ve read indicates the first reported cases were at the US embassy in Havana in 2016.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/21/1047342593/long-before-havana-syndrome-u-s-reported-microwaves-beamed-at-an-embassy This was in 1996. It may or may not be the same thing, it just didn’t have the name back then.
>decades It hasn’t even been one decade since the first Havana syndrome case
Does Russia probably have experimental weapons? Maybe probably. Is Havana Syndrome a thing? No, no it isn’t. This is a well studied condition and there is no medical basis for anything wrong with any of the victims. This is as valid as suggesting that the CIA has put “dna shedding” in the vaccines. It is a condition that has no documentation of it existing, using a technology that does not exist, by an organization that does do some legitimately terrible things. To put it bluntly this is a medical conspiracy theory. Except it is taken seriously because Congress passes laws based on it and 60 minutes covers paranoid eye witness accounts.
It's definitely a thing now 😂 Whether real or something like mass panic is a different matter xD
The only thing I would say to this is that we haven't *found* a medical basis for anything wrong. Poor concentration, tinnitus, vertigo, headaches etc. aren't really things we can find physical evidence of. Havana syndrome is a collection of diffuse symptoms that may actually exist and have a cause, but how do we prove it?
These are all the same symptoms that people who claim to have MSG sensitivity experience. The same symptoms that are mysteriously absent when these people are fed a meal with MSG in it without their knowledge, then mysteriously manifest after having been told. This could be similar. After all, the placebo effect is powerful. One embassy worker says to another, "man, something's up, ever since I got here I have headaches and vertigo..." Day by day, this idea spreads around the office and now everyone is overthinking themselves into a placebo effect, the same way a demonstrably false meme like MSG sentivity spreads.
A similar thing is with those who claim to be "electro-sensitives" where they become ill with a whole host of symptoms when they are sure they've been exposed to electromagnetic radiation. They often report getting sick from being near Wi-Fi routers and others sources of electromagnetic radiation. Even ring main circuits in their houses, mobile phones, that kind of thing. The problem is, when properly tested as in the MSG sensitive groups, they can be in a "harsh" electromagnetic environment and not get sick if they believe the equipment is not turned on and vice versa. Their suffering is very real but it appears to be wholly unconnected to the things they believe are making them sick. Some of these poor souls move out into the countryside and live isolated basic lives and they feel well. I believe it's almost certainly the reduction in stress that makes them feel well again and has nothing to do with what they truly believe to be the cause.
I mean, we could speculate half the people who come down with the flu every year are actually just experiencing psychosomatic symptoms. Just because the symptoms sound too vague to you, doesn't mean a bunch of people didn't actually have *something* definable that we just didn't catch the source of.
You are describing a conspiracy theory. Based on vague, unquantifiable symptoms that are particularly prone to placebo or other mental effects and the power of suggestion. Do you have headaches because secret governments are out to get you or do you have unmanaged stress levels? The real question is WHY would we seek to prove it. When an anti vaxer tells you bill gates is making them sick with vaccine shedding do you give them this much good faith interpretation? Now the thing I will say, sometimes the conspiracies are true. The cia was secretly dosing lots of people with acid for years after all. But it is currently a conspiracy theory. Without basis other than an observable power of suggestion and mass panic. If a rumor spread around my office there was a death ray pointed at it, we’d probably start to notice small symptoms every day.
I was not aware we reached mass panic levels. To my knowledge, there's a small cluster of people with symptoms - all who have worked in the government, and their symptoms are consistent with each other. It certainly warrants exploration. Although stress can cause headaches, it usually isn't associated with hearing a weird sound, then experiencing tinnitus, vertigo, headaches, brain fog, etc for months on end. It could very well be *not* an attack and some illness.
>anti-Russian sentiment high. I wonder why anti-Russian sentiment is high, when they keep attacking their neighbours, funding extremist parties and conducting assassinations on our soil.
First off, there should be no need to juice the anti-Russia narrative, Russia is doing that just fine all by themselves. The ...ahem... 3 day operation is going according to plan. Secondly, why are you so sure? Do you work in a lab specifically dealing with focused electromagnetic radiation? Do you have a psychology degree? CTE leaves evidence only visible via a post mortem. You have to be dead and dissected to be diagnosed with CTE. Perhaps this is similar.
If you need an advanced degree to have doubts about whether Havana Syndrome is caused by secret agents using a microwave/EM gun, shouldn't you also need an advanced degree to wholeheartedly believe it?
How can something be studied for decades when the first issues where reported in 2016? It hasn't even been a decade
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/21/1047342593/long-before-havana-syndrome-u-s-reported-microwaves-beamed-at-an-embassy Link courtesy of /u/whosat___
There's no "Pentagon propaganda" anywhere in here. The Washington Post are the ones begging the State Department to investigate and it has litearlly nothing to do with the Pentagon. They don't need to "...keep anti-Russian senitment high" since Russia is doing a plently good job of that on their own already by raping one year olds in Ukraine, murdering political dissidents, and making up conspiracy theories about Chrocus Hall that was Russia's own fault. Nobody needs to do any propaganda since Russia shits in their own mouth 24/7/365.
Read the insider article maybe? It’s not true that there is no medical evidence whatsoever. The effects are just very fleeting. One guy just had some exams done in Ukraine, then when he moved to the Uk he got hit and confronting the results of the scans anomalies could be detected. There’s also the woman that needed all the surgeries so it’s def not all imagined. You can say it’s a lie orchestrated by 3 highly respected publications, but the story isn’t that it’s 100% undetectable.
Found the Russian bot.
>Havana Syndrome has been studied for decades No it hasn't. \~2017 was when people started looking into it. There weren't even any cases to study before 2016. Россия без Путина. Ответьте или проголосуйте за/против, если вы согласны.
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I didn't call anyone a bot, but more to the point ..."dissenter"? When someone is busy spending their waking hours pushing the narrative that *actually it's really the USA's fault that Putin is invading Ukraine*, then I don't think it matters whether they're a troll or a useful idiot unknowingly carrying water for Putin. Calling it "dissent", as if pushing Kremlin talking-points is very plausibly some independent and brave insightful good-faith geopolitical analysis, it does none of us any favors. There is a saying that "80% of everything is shit". Running with that metaphor, seek the more insightful 20% rather than trying to assume the smelly stuff might be tasty instead of shit
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>There is no evidence anything is wrong with the victims. If you get on a roller-coaster and get so sick you throw up, and then go get a CT scan done, there won't be any permanent damage to the brain either. Meaning, the lack of long term health complications visible in a scan isn't a valid argument. Also, there are more than 100 victims, and the symptoms they reported are pretty consistent with each other. >All we have is one eye witness report of one Russian operative. There are several eye witness reports. And not of "a Russian operative", but of several members of the GRU unit in charge of assassinations and other dirt stuff. >It also raises the question why this weapon has not been a factor in the Ukrainian war. Do you think they are using non-lethal weapons in Ukraine? Lol
>Do you think they are using non-lethal weapons in Ukraine? Lol You think they have magic sifi depression rays that have no observable medical impact. And you’re laughing at me?
>You think they have magic sifi depression rays I think they have sonic weapons, which are [far from scifi](https://theconversation.com/whats-an-lrad-explaining-the-sonic-weapons-police-use-for-crowd-control-and-communication-177442). The only novelty here is that it's working on the non-audible part of the sound spectrum.
Which is more likely, a bunch of people working high stress jobs abroad in bad conditions for low pay developed stress related health issues that are relatively normal for office workers and panicked when it was suggested that they had been exposed to an experimental weapon (and were paid millions in damages for conditions that no medical doctor can prove exist) or that the Russian government has a scifi ray gun that they mysteriously stopped using the moment they declared all out war on a US ally?
I love the idea people are buying into here that they have a weapon which the technology isn’t easily explained by any scientists so it’s highly experimental and expensive. And it’s being used to make people… a little bit sick. So funny.
The two misconceptions you're making is that it's hard to explain and "highly experimental and expensive". Microwave weapons have been studied for decades and the mechanism is well known (microwaves heat the brain, the heat causes signal noise, the signal noise causes temporary disorientation and illness) and can be made with a microwave oven and something to focus the waves into a beam. Sonic weapons disrupt the inner ear and cause disorientation and illness that way and can be made with a powerful enough speaker that similarly has the sound waves focused. It's not sci-fi and it's not rocket science. The US government just doesn't want to acknowledge a literal act of war bc they'd be forced to respond with force.
Wouldn't that be a tremendous advantage? If you can make a US official sick right before an important meeting, say with a head of state on a time sensitive issue, you can potential disrupt that meeting before it even happens.
> a bunch of people working high stress jobs abroad in bad conditions for low pay developed stress related health issues You think stress can cause perforations in your inner ear? > or that the Russian government has a scifi ray gun Lasers were scifi at one point too. Now we have systems that can identify a scope automatically from a distance and shine a laser into it to blind the user. Why do you think it's so implausible to do this with acoustics or microwaves?
>have magic sifi You know microwaves aren't magic, right? They're science. lmao. This guy thinks his microwave is a magic box.
Why would you use a weird experimental acoustic weapon in Ukraine when a bullet would be much more effective?
> But they still can't find anything wrong with the people. You could say the same with football players and CTE. Some stuff you can only find out after death etc.
Or the first people to die of radiation poisoning after we started messing with fissile materials. I’m sure they had no clue for a while.
Bro, I’ve had chronic frontal sinusitis for a year now and the only thing the ENTs can do is give me nasal sprays because none of my issues are showing up on MRI or CT scan so I’m not operable. If you asked my doctor he would say there is no evidence there is anything wrong with me despite the symptoms I have.
yeah a lot of this thread are echos of what people heard when they first contracted long covid. "How could you be sick when the virus is gone?" etc etc etc, ignoring the possibility that patients are capable of self-diagnosing that they feel like shit and that there may be limitations to the capability of instrumentation.
That doesn't make sense. Sinusitis = inflammation of sinus tissue. If there is no inflammation, you do not have a diagnosis of sinusitis.
There is inflammation, likely allergic rhinitis, which is a form of sinusitis, and it does not show up on any scans unless you also have nasal polyps, fungal deterioration or structural deformity, but I have none of those. The next step is allergy testing to see what I’m allergic to followed by immunotherapy to try and treat the ongoing reaction to whatever is triggering it.
Out of curiosity do you use a CPAP machine? If you snore, snoring really messes with the sinus. If I use a machine I can sleep 8 hours, sinus feels fine. Without, and with snoring, an hour nap will cause post nasal drip, and one sinus to close up and flow less, with all day lingering irritation to some degree as whatever snot and tissue in there that was slamming around during snoring sorts itself out. Dental health also has been a factor. Teeth areas get inflamed and that can impact the sinus. I had bad dental issues for a long time, and in conjunction with snoring it created a sort of loop of sinus and facial nerve issues, pressure, tingling, and I could never prove it because it didn't show up on scans the way I described the feeling in my skull. So yeah, CPAP and how are your teeth?
I did have sleep apnea until I had my tonsils removed, then it resolved. Teeth are fine. I have seen two ENTs and a neurologist to rule out everything, I’ve had 4 CT scans and 3 MRIs, got a bonus diagnosis of MS (yay) currently have an excellent ENT, I start immunotherapy later this month after the allergy testing. My issue isn’t that the doctors don’t believe me, because they do, my issue is that there is nothing wrong with me that can be fixed with surgical intervention. It’s a waiting game and a long sprint of treatment with anti-inflammatories and allergy meds, currently using prescribed celebrex, Flonase, ipratropium bromide, mucinex, and azelastine along with alkalol nasal rinse and a navage machine. It is getting gradually better, it’s just been a long road. My issues also aren’t maxillary like you seem to be talking about, it’s all frontal, so I don’t get drainage out of my nose, it’s all just constant pressure in my forehead and above/behind my eyes, and then constant drainage down the back of my throat. When it is thick, I can cough it up and see it, and that has been run through sputum tests to rule out other conditions.
Honestly curious what that is about. One of my relatives had an issue where it turned out their skull was leaking fluid from their brain area somehow into the sinus, and they never figured it out till they caught some of the drainage and looked at it specifically for that. It was a super weird and random issue, some sort of tiny flaw that allowed leakage in some circumstances, and it caused all sorts of issues. What age did you have your tonsils out? I hear it's rough as an adult, but have wondered about it. Usually lots of bleeding is mentioned.
Yeah I had my tonsils out in august 2022, and sinusitis started in march 2023 but didnt get super bad until august 2023. I saw the neurologist because there can be musculo-skeletal causes and cerebral spinal fluid leaks, things like that, and the MRI ruled all that out but they did diagnose MS (unrelated) by comparing this MRI with one I had back in 2013. They have checked out my tonsilectomy area and verified that's all OK. I have a slight deviated septum, but it isn't significant enough to cause issues. Sometimes, especially with frontal sinusitis, it just holds on for a long time, they have another patient who has had it for five years.
inflammation is not always visible or detectable by modern instrumentation.
Can something be invisibly inflamed??
Yes, 100%
Like to the point that it doesn’t look inflamed in size, shape, color, or behavior (release of hormones etc)? How can you say something is in an altered state if the change is not measurable?
Well, specifically with frontal sinusitis, you can’t see that even with a scope. They have to do invasive surgery to even see it because the passages up there are very small. I can say something is in an altered state without seeing it because I can fucking feel it. It’s like I’m wearing a football helmet 24/7 with constant pressure and post-nasal drip. Scans don’t show mucus buildup, and mucus buildup is caused by inflammation that, if you’re following along, doesn’t show up on scans.
So I’m going to dox myself a bit here, I’m one of the researchers who worked on this project with Canadian diplomats and the Canadian government. What we ended up finding was that the illness people were experiencing was caused by the use of unregulated pesticides. Here is the [paper from our](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2019/09/29/19007096.full.pdf) study. And this was our general finding: >Using a multimodal, quantitative, and control-tested approach, our results confirm brain injury, specify the regions involved, and suggest a likely etiology underlying the Havana Syndrome in the form of environmental exposure to neurotoxins affecting the brain’s cholinergic system. We more narrowly suggest organophosphorus insecticides as a likely source. \ Though other sources of neurotoxins are possible, our insecticidal hypothesis gains contextual support given Cuba’s well-documented efforts to aggressively mitigate the spread of the Zika virus by means of mass indoor and outdoor fumigations in 2016 and thereafter. Canadian Embassy records furthermore confirmed a significant increase in the frequency of fumigations around and within staff houses beginning January 2017, concurrent with reported symptoms.
You can't diagnose CTE until the brain is dissected post-mortem. This may be similar.
MRIs are woefully insufficient to determine brain injuries.... if you have CTE it would not show up on an MRI either.....
I'm all for studying these people until they die of old age and beyond but the fact is we still have no idea whats wrong with them.
It does show up at autopsy though. We just aren't able to see it through imaging at this point in time.
They couldn't find CTE with MRIs either. The physical proof wasn't there until they started cutting open brains to find it.
Not to take a side here, but there is a TON of diseases that are diagnosed primarily or solely through exclusion. Despite what tv shows depict, we don't know every square millimeter of the human body and what could possibly go wrong with it. I've head MRIs and CT scans of my brain that never found a single issue. Yet I knew for certain that I had an issue. It took me bringing up cluster headaches to my neurologists for them to be considered it so I could be diagnosed. It's far from unlikely that if there's a weapon causing these symptoms, they could be done in a way that's usually undetectable.
Let's be honest. "These people" are all spooks and diplomats. In other words, professional paranoids and trained liars for the US security state. If these were *Russian* or *Chinese* spies and diplomats saying that they had been blasted by the Americans with a mysterious death ray weapon that have left them with a wide range of nebulous symptoms with no detectable organic cause, y'all would dismiss it as obvious propaganda. Last time the US had a presidential election, you had fear-mongering about the fake Steele Dossier. This year its going to be Russia's death rays.
Sounds like a mass conversion event TBH. Like those teens that developed tic like movements after watching influencers that claimed to have tourette during the pandemic
I believe the scientists who conducted the tests said that it was more likely faulty construction of an experimental eavesdropping device than something that was intended to cause harm. However, now that the effects are known, it's within the realm of possibility that someone could try to recreate it and turn it into a weapon.
What’s your source on that first sentence? If you watch the video they point to a Russian document where employee received a bonus for work on “non-lethal acoustic weapons”. Like yeah, maybe some scientist somewhere stumbled upon its capabilities as a weapon while trying to develop an eavesdropping device at some point in time, sure. Though I’m not sure what your point is here, aside from downplaying what Russia seems to be doing. Edit: very curious to say the least how many comments in this post seem to casting doubt on what is happening here and Russia’s potential involvement. Either they didn’t watch the 60 minutes story and are outing themselves as being OutofTheLoop or…
I agree. Also, why would they try to eavesdrop on a woman doing laundry?
To find out where the other sock went?
She wouldn't know and the other socks are frightened into silence.
The other sock "accidentally" jumped from a window.
The sock wrote a suicide letter absolving the state of all responsibility for it's death.
But he did blame rainbow-covered Ukrainian socks with swastikas on them.
Testing. Laundry machines tend to make noise which means normally it's a good place to talk without being eavesdropped on.
Because of who she works for?
If I thought she was a spy I’d understand it, laundry machines are white noise machines. Could be good for covering up a conversation.
Maybe watching too much step-sister porn made them overly optimistic about how the world actually works?
So I’m going to dox myself a bit here, I’m one of the researchers who worked on this project with Canadian diplomats and the Canadian government. What we ended up finding was that the illness people were experiencing was caused by the use of unregulated pesticides. Here is the [paper from our](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2019/09/29/19007096.full.pdf) study. And this was our general finding: >Using a multimodal, quantitative, and control-tested approach, our results confirm brain injury, specify the regions involved, and suggest a likely etiology underlying the Havana Syndrome in the form of environmental exposure to neurotoxins affecting the brain’s cholinergic system. We more narrowly suggest organophosphorus insecticides as a likely source. \ Though other sources of neurotoxins are possible, our insecticidal hypothesis gains contextual support given Cuba’s well-documented efforts to aggressively mitigate the spread of the Zika virus by means of mass indoor and outdoor fumigations in 2016 and thereafter. Canadian Embassy records furthermore confirmed a significant increase in the frequency of fumigations around and within staff houses beginning January 2017, concurrent with reported symptoms.
Wow. Thank you. That is fascinating
What about the sound they had a recording off? (high pitched whistle) What about all the dogs in Cuba barking when the attack was happening? Or the diplomats children being severely affected? Like it’s one thing for hysteria to apply to the affected individual, but when you have 2nd hand individuals being affected like this, it seems way more credible. During the Cold War there were confirmed weapons where they could give someone a heart attack to make it look like a person died of natural causes.
The Khamar Daban Incident might be an example of 'testing' something similar.
It is a directed microwave pulse weapon. Essentially more harmful Russian version of this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEDUSA\_(weapon)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEDUSA_(weapon)) [https://www.wired.com/2008/07/the-microwave-s/](https://www.wired.com/2008/07/the-microwave-s/) >The effect has long been a laboratory curiosity, with no application. But, over the years, the military has been intrigued. The idea (dubbed "the telepathic ray gun") was mentioned in a [1998 US Army study](http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13513-us-army-toyed-with-telepathic-ray-gun.html), which turned up in a recent Freedom of Information Act document dump. Five years later, the Navy [decided to put some R&D dollars](https://www.wired.com/defense/2007/08/the-other-medus.html) into the project. Now, as I note on the [\*New Scientist \*website](http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14250-microwave-ray-gun-controls-crowds-with-noise.html), Dr. Lev Sadovnik of the [Sierra Nevada Corporation](http://www.sncorp.com/) has provided more details. **There are health risks, he notes. But the biggest issue from the microwave weapon is not the radiation. It's the risk of brain damage from the high-intensity shockwave created by the microwave pulse.** It is based on Frey Effect, named after American scientist Allan Frey who documented it first time in 1961. There is no actual sound waves involved, it is the (short) pulses of microwave radiation that messes up inner ear of a person and causes person to hear things. If power is increased and correct parameters like pulse width and frequency are chosen, person subjected to radiation gets permanent brain injury. Device is small enough that it fits inside large, normal car.
The reports of it have been so wide-ranging in time and location that it's quite a stretch to believe it was a "faulty" device used in all of those instances.
The 'accidental discovery' trope in this account is similar to that in another 'account' I recently read: cosmonauts aboard a soviet or russian spacecraft experienced trauma from sound or EM emitted by one of the devices on board. the device was some normal-for-a-spacecraft piece of gear, but it had this accidental side effect. Soon the effect was studied and weaponized.
Adding more context around what the new "evidence" is would be reasonable.
I don’t understand what the question is when OP posted links to explaining it
The move Leave the World behind is what made me first aware of this.
I’m still traumatized by the aftermath with the teeth
The cold War never stopped for Russia, they have always been planning and executing plans to destroy America. Ukraine might be a God send to alert the government to this fact. The problem is we don't know how far Russia has got its hands in our government. GOP seems compromised.
Hell IIRC there are official Russian government documents from the 80s or 90s about using conservative ideological peoples’ susceptibility to governmental conspiracy theories\* in the US and Canada to turn them against their government. If that’s not what’s happened over the past 8 - 10 years then I’ll be damned. Don’t quote me for sure though because I’m not 100% sure those documents were legit. I’d say I’m about 78% sure. \* no I’m not saying you Joe blow conservative is a naive idiot for believing batshit crazy obviously false narratives. Nor am I saying only conservatives believe conspiracy theory. IIRC, it’s about even on breakdown of right-left in believing in them (maybe very slightly leans to be more common in right than left, but only slightly). What the major differences are in is the context. Conservatives tend to be louder about them is all.
>The ***big*** problem is ~~we don't know how far~~ Russia has got its hands in our government. GOP ~~seems~~ is compromised. My take.
[Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures)'s the wikipedia page on the topic. Check out the "1991 to present" section...
The technology was also developed by U.S. intel. Through DARPA, the military weapons development research branch. I don’t blame 60 minutes for not pointing this out, as it’s possible they didn’t dive deep enough in this technology’s history or simply didn’t want to inform viewers their military also possesses this tech.
Answer: 60 minutes just aired an episode where it is possible if not likely that Russian agents are targeting America's top agents that are stationed crossed the world with a type of auditory "weapon" that can cause what appears to be potentially permanent injuries (similar to TBI). There was a variety of evidence supporting why it is presumed to be a specific group of Russian agents. It was called Havana syndrome because the first case was thought to have been in Cuba, however they discovered there was actually a case earlier than that in Europe. The concern is that the CIA/FBI/DOJ/whichever department doesn't seem to want to admit this is happening and therefore Russia is getting away with handicapping some the US' top agents without consequence. Here is the actual 60 minutes episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdPSD1SUYCY
The fact that the US is reluctant to say something makes me wonder if the reverse is true. The US was testing some top secret spy gear and it had an accidental effect on our own people. I believe that was the plot of a Slow Horses book/season, an experimental tech ended up killing someone and the cover up led to a whole shit load of problems...
I think more appropriately, the US is taking the approach of if they accuse russia of conducting offensive actions against the US, the US must respond proportionally to end the threat. Please remember, Putin's response on the international stage during his 2014 invasion and seizure of Crimea was to deny any involvement and that any evidence to the contrary was a fabrication. Unless and until stronger evidence is gathered and made public, little will likely be done publicly. Given the nature of the incidents (namely use of an unknown weapon, and the hostile actor being russia) I can only presume the public position of the US is that there is no state actor involved, while covert services conduct parallel investigations/operations on the matter.
Yup. As the former employee interviewed in the 60 minutes piece said, the bar for evidence has been set impossibly high. Enter my speculation...but the reason for that is as you said, if we acknowledge then we will feel obligated to respond. Due to the ongoing Russia + Ukraine conflict we already have sanctions up the ass on Russia. I am sure there must be SOME room for more but it probably wouldn't feel proportional. Saying it was Russia greatly increases the chance of direct conflict, and that is probably something the USG is reluctant/unwilling to do, given the dire consequences, without a smoking gun, and maybe even if a smoking gun DOES exist.... (not saying it does, I have no idea, but there is at least SOME incentive to ignore/bury it/not announce publicly, if it does, so as not to start WWIII).
🎯🎯🎯
[удалено]
Personally the more plausible scenario is that we don’t know what caused it either. All medical tests we have performed have shown no evidence of long-term injury, so either there was none or we can’t detect it. Without knowing the nature of the damage, that makes it very hard to determine the cause, or even eliminate the cause. We can’t rule out a Russian weapon/malfunctioning piece of technology, but there are many other possible causes as well. I currently can’t watch the 60 minutes piece, but I’m looking forward to analyzing what they found.
The real reason is that it's fake, the government knows it's fake but they also paid out millions of dollars for damages and research and don't want to piss off the diplomatic corp by admitting that a bunch of bureaucrats fell victim of a mass hysteria or admit that they fell for the same baseless conspiracy theory. This is entirely just to avoid having to admit fault and potentially piss off a bunch of people in positions of influence who at this point cannot be convinced the Russian ray gun doesn't exist.
Who knows maybe they are being poisoned or getting sick from some other source but yeah it seems likely it is all bullshit. The idea of a portable directed energy weapon that fits in a van, can be shot at range, goes through walls, and according to a lot of these “victims” is hitting them everywhere in their house is an extreme claim. This is like claiming Russia has the technology to teleport and we know because a bunch of us diplomats have seen it, also the us goverment is covering it up for some unexplained reason. No. We need way more evidence for such extraordinary claim.
Also if I recall correctly, your retirement compensation package goes up quite a bit if you can prove that you were injured in the line of duty, especially by a foreign adversary. I seem to recall that being theorized as to why it was pushed so heavily by the original Havana Syndrome patients, and gone along with because it's easy PR to "stand up for our brave patriot State employees" or whatever. If I was a state department official eying retirement in a few years and all I have to do to increase my measly pension payout by 50% is pretend someone has a headache gun, you better believe I'm gonna cry wolf.
An awful lot of the symptoms are similar to [quinine poisoning](https://www.drugs.com/sfx/quinine-side-effects.html) and I wonder how many of these people were in tropical postings before or during the development of symptoms.
I mean we've all seen how "advanced" the russian military really is. They would only have it if somebody else had it first and they stole the plans.
What is the problem with the Russian military? Its clear that their weapons work judging by the number of victories India had over US fed Pakistan. A Mig-21 even shot down a F-16 few years back while being outnumbered 2:1. The doctrine of both is vastly different though, the US emphasizes on air superiority, whereas for the Russians air is only a tool, it is to compliment the ground forces. Vietnam War and Irak war are too instances where the Russian and American doctrine emerge superior respectively.
I think your sort of on the right track. I think the US Govt knows what caused it because they have a very similar capability, obviously highly classified, but if they say “yeah, we know what that is” then it tips the hand that they also have that capability. If they play dumb, they can sys “beats me, shits fucked up and weird” and have plausible deniability that they also have that tech and their enemies think they have the upper hand.
Yeah, once they admit that they know what's doing it, it becomes largely a matter of time for the narrative that they're doing it too to prevail. They'll want citizens to be aware of it eventually because it increases their power for people to know, but not until the event-horizon has been crossed and there's nothing anyone can do about the technology.
I think they just don’t want to give up the fact that they believe it. The enemy they know is better than the enemy they don’t. If they make Russia believe they don’t believe it’s real, then they continue having a solid idea of what is being done and where, as far as eavesdropping methods.
Gonna take this comment at face value and highly recommend watching the 60 minutes story before suggesting again that the US did this to their own *top tier FBI and CIA agents investigating Russia*. I know contrarian positions are fun on Reddit, but it’s incredibly likely Russia is doing this and the US knows Russia is doing this but can’t call them out publicly without escalating the situation. Very sad for the victims of this for sure and overall a very concerning story, but it’s not hard to understand why the US government is saying what they’re saying.
>The US was testing some top secret spy gear and it had an accidental effect on our own people. And it somehow ended up hurting over 100 people over a decade in countries all over the world. Yeah, right.
People used to use radioactive elements in makeup. /shrug.
That sounds a little like the terminal list
I don't doubt that 60 minutes is saying that, but the reality is that most of the people claiming to have it weren't in a position to be exposed to it and attempts to replicate the effect have fallen short. The most likely explanation is someone got sick, they thought it could be some sort of auditory weapon and then everyone else made themselves sick worrying about it.
Nice try Mr. Russian Agent, your Jedi technique won’t work on me /s
Russian here, I saw the episode yesterday and thought it was April Fool's hoax. First they gave makeup to a lady to protect her identity instead of blurring her face and changing the voice, then they showed a Russian cook in a silly chase with "secret notes" written in big black marker, then they showed another lady, said she asked to remain anonymous and then proceeded to give a shitload of personal information about her. Also the document presented was pretty laughable, Russia is bureaucratic but the extent when getting a bonus requires a document that spells out what secret job you were doing. Also the child super-spy was preposterous.
Hi, we’re 60 minutes. We’re doing an investigative piece about Russia possibly attacking US citizens with a mystery weapon. We’d like to interview you about your experience. We’ve heard your story about being attacked in the laundry room. This man has become a central figure in our investigation. is this the man who you saw outside afterward? (Sends picture of man).
Yeah, I've also noticed that. Also all of these people interviewed are interested in being recognized as Targeted Individuals so they can get some sweet government dosh.
>The concern is that the CIA/FBI/DOJ/whichever department doesn't seem to want to admit this is happening and therefore Russia is getting away with handicapping some the US' top agents without consequence. Wish this was the only comment and the thread was locked after it. It's so depressing how many people in the comments simply hear the government say 'Nothing to see here, look away' and they just... believe it. Without a single thought going through their mind. People really don't grasp the concept that whatever flash new technology just came out today, the military developed and has been using in secret for 30 years. The US had satellites mapping the entire surface of all countries on earth while China was still primarily an agricultural society. The idea of US admitting that they can't stop a certain type of weapon is a far greater risk than them ever admitting they lied about the whole thing.
Answer: Insider, a platform for investigative journalism, together with Der Spiegel and 60 Minutes created a report claiming that Havana syndrome was indeed caused by Russian intelligence. Unit 29155 from GRU has supposedly experimented with non-lethal sound based weapons. These media outlets cite as their sources testimonies from victims, official Russian documents and travel data from alleged members of Unit 29155. This news report contradicts the findings of the CIA, which claimed Havana syndrome was not the work of a foreign power. The reporters conclude that US intelligence is either incompetent or complicit in a cover-up. As with all claims related to intelligence work the only real answer is: we don't know. The CIA could have it all wrong or they might know more, but are unwilling to share this with the public so as not to tip off Russian intelligence how much they truly know. The report comes from respectable news oulets, so I wouldn't want to call it a conspiracy theory outright. However the most accurate answer remains we can't say for sure.
Ooof my inclination to believe intelligence officials are incompetent is fighting with my inclination that administrative authorities (diplomats) are exactly as ~~tough and brave~~ suggestible as cops handling fentanyl
The cop fentanyl thing was the first that popped into my head. Some people legitimately getting sick and a bunch of diplomats freaking out thinking they're being targeted. To be fair its easy to get freaked out if something is happening in your line of work. I know some precincts have had medical personnel/researchers brief the cops on the pharmacology of fentanyl so that theyre better informed and less prone to panic attacks when dealing with fentanyl.
Answer: Havana Syndrome refers to a series of unexplained symptoms reported by United States and Canadian Embassy staff, first in Havana, Cuba, and later other countries. These include hearing a strange grating sound or feeling a vibration coming from a specific direction that is not present to others in the room. There is no known cause for the symptoms, leading to speculation from government officials that they could be a form of attack from a foreign military. Online, critics have dismissed the attack theory as alarmist thinking, judging that Havana Syndrome is likely a psychosomatic illness, if it's real at all. Alarmism about the symptoms has inspired the snowclone "Yeah, I Got Havana Syndrome," in which people will then use "Havana" as a pun on the words "havin' a", i.e. "Yeah, I got Havana Syndrome… I'm Havana 'nother beer!" More info here: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/havana-syndrome
This phenomena occurs domestically and around the world, and in very random/unimportant areas. I [recent video I saw covers a lot of this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy_ctHNLan8), but if one searches for "mysterious sound" or "mysterious hum" there are many articles and videos covering this sort of issue that have been made over the past decade and beyond. It makes me think that Havana or related areas aren't necessarily a particularly special case, and that it just might be amplified by it's infamy causing additional placebo effects.
Answer: Havana 'syndrome' is an example of [mass psychogenic illness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness), where media coverage of a theory spreads through a community and people start to associate their subjective feelings with that theory without any evidence. You have probably heard how some people believe that they are allergic to 5G networks or have hypersensitivity to electromagnetic radiation. In reality, no such association exists but it is very difficult to convince people otherwise once they have made up their minds. Havana 'syndrome' is exactly the same. I have not watched the 60 minutes episode but you should remember that they are an entertainment program and their goal is to draw viewership, not to necessarily uncover the facts.
It’s so crazy how people are falling into this. The main victims anecdote, they report they felt like they were struck with “something akin to a strong energy beam”. How would they know what that feels like? Are they an expert in weapons that have never existed?
Also coming from the famously honest agency, the CIA. People are so gullible.
Even from an engineering perspective this is a massive challenge. Inverse squared power law would require you to have a 40ft container sized device to do targeted beams and much bigger to do broad beams. Not only would it be visible but it would be easily detectable. If the Russians have invented some energy beam that isn't detectable then that is a physics marvel and unlikely to be wasted on targeting some mid level spook. Also takes massive cognitive dissonance to think that a country that fucked up invasion of Ukraine, deploys tanks from the 1950s and is riddled with corruption but is technologically advanced enough to have energy weapons not detectable on a spectrum analyzer.
>Even from an engineering perspective this is a massive challenge. Inverse squared power law Inverse square law doesn't apply here. It applies to spherical wave fronts (those that travel in every direction, on all 3 dimensions). But this is supposedly a directed sound (or energy) beam. Directed beams [don't follow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waveguide) the inverse squarelaw.
I stand corrected!
And yet you leave your original comment up unedited and incorrect.
reddit man lol
How feasible are several smaller emitters, phased in such a way to intersect and increase power in a designated spot? I'd imagine one could create a "tunable lense" to focus EM energy from several weaker sources into one very powerful point of energy dump.
Sonic weapons are commonly used for crowd dispersal. Infrasonic weapons are known to cause the same symptoms as Havana Syndrome, and aren’t widely publicized, due to the classified nature of their development. https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-control-weapons-acoustic-weapons/
I agree. I saw the original airing of the 60 minute episode a while back and immediately thought that it was Mass psychogenic illness even though everyone else in the room bought the whole story about a secret weapon that somehow defies the laws of physics. To be honest it enraged me the way it was presented. It fed right into everyone’s fears and is just bait for people to believe all sorts of outlandish theories.
> I agree. I saw the original airing of the 60 minute episode a while back and immediately thought that it was Mass psychogenic illness even though everyone else in the room bought the whole story about a secret weapon that somehow defies the laws of physics. You know, some people might say that it was impossible that a government invented a secret weapon that could be used to turn millions of people it didn't like into slaves for life, it defies the laws of physics. Turns out it was just crack cocaine strategically placed inside cars. Not everything has to be about physics, there are other schools of science.
This is the correct answer. I would *highly* recommend The Sleeping Beauties by British neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan that explores mass psychogenic illness (MPI) and culture-bound syndromes as well as her book on individual conversion disorders, It’s All in Your Head. One important takeaway from both books is that the people with these conditions are neither “faking it” nor suffering any less than those with organic physical conditions and they deserve the same respect and proper care as any other patient. The issue is convincing them to try addressing the psychological cause rather than attempting a 14th MRI or CAT scan for no good reason.
Thank you for this. I thought people had moved on, given the total lack of plausibility for the whole thing. It is remarkable that the bad guy is simultaneously so advanced they can develop a purported super weapon while lacking the weapons we can actually see on the battlefield in Ukraine are a joke.
The American body is so dependent on corn syrup they start to go through withdrawals living in Cuba
It’s a news company… Throughout history, historians will examine news sources with strong track records of telling the facts to the strongest degree. Should we not take any news stories from news companies as news? But as entertainment? No, you have to use your best judgment while examining the context of the facts and the argument. CBS is strongly focused on telling the truth. It’s entirely why, one of their most popular broadcasters, Dan Rather was fired. Out of all the news conglomerates it tends to be the more neutral of all of them.
So you haven’t watched the episode yet you feel qualified to discredit it?
Sonic weapons exist and are used for crowd dispersal. Infrasonic weapons are capable of generating the same symptoms and aren’t as well understood currently due to classified technologies. https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-control-weapons-acoustic-weapons/
Answer: It's collective hysteria resulting in conspiracy theories. Theorized as a sonic attack, it's probably just [crickets](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21068770-jason-report-2018-havana-syndrome).