Havana syndrome: NSA officer’s case hints at microwave attacks since 90s

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/02/havana-syndrome-nsa-officer-microwave-attacks-since-90s

by samizdis • 5 years ago

211 197 5 years ago

Google2342• 5 years ago

Why don’t they install detectors inside all the embassies at risk to prove or disprove this? Why didn’t they do this earlier? I’m pretty sure there are many places that could be contracted to make a detector in a few weeks - this isn’t new technology. This seems really easy to test... so why are we still speculating.

rbanffy• 5 years ago

A small detector would be easy to build and carry around, with 80’s technology.

The connection between these events is tenuous at best.

Google2342• 5 years ago

Yeah, it actually looks like you can buy them on Amazon for about 30$. I don’t want to doubt but this seems so simple to test that the lack of any direct evidence makes me suspicious.

https://www.amazon.com/Electromagnetic-Radiation-5HZ-3500MHz...

GVIrish3• 5 years ago

They could try that, but it seems like personnel are being attacked outside of embassies. They'd need to equip everyone's domicile with detectors as well.

That said, State Dept and the intelligence community should've been all over this. When this happened in Cuba, everyone should've been on high alert. When it happened again after, people should've snapped into action.

It's possible that the powers that be didn't take it seriously but now there's no excuse for Biden admin not to act. Clearly the perpetrator is emboldened and will persist until they experience serious consequences.

And at the very least, those affected by this should be getting workers comp and full support to deal with the effects.

cheaprentalyeti2• 5 years ago

Uh, the administration Biden belonged to more or less ignored worse stuff than this that enabled attacks like this. Take, for example, the OPM "hack." Read this:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/06/encry...

IF you're wondering how whoever was running attacks like this would get the data to follow people home with attacks like this, in places where there aren't any sensors, look at these hearings from 2014.

Noone was fired, noone even lost their pension over that.

6510• 5 years ago

I would put them on police cars. They are driving around anyway and their other duties are not that different. Also, the alternative is for them not to know they are getting zapped.

LatteLazy2• 5 years ago

If they did, there is no reason we would be told or the results would be made public.

StanislavPetrov• 5 years ago

Especially if and when they detected nothing and continued to claim they were being attacked by dastardly enemies.

swiley• 5 years ago

I've honestly thought about keeping one of these in my apartment, I worry a bit about people doing stupid things with microwave ovens.

ta9882• 5 years ago

Something like that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNFc1dfU7k

tscherno• 5 years ago

As far as I know the creator of this site was later hospitalized in to locked-ward psychiatry.

http://mikrowellenterror.de/english/index.htm

Johnythree3• 5 years ago

So much this!

Any radio beam which was strong enough to affect human tissue would drive a basic EM detector crazy.

A suitable detector would be a simple wire dipole, a schottky diode and a meter. Any radio hobbyist could make you one in a few minutes.

Plus such a strong field would drive most domestic electronics equipment crazy due to our crappy RF immunity regulations..

ALittleLight2• 5 years ago

Absurd that groups as well resourced as the intelligence agencies aren't taking care of their people who've seemingly been injured in enemy attacks.

Also, I don't understand the point of using this weapon. It seems like it causes debilitating issues, sometimes years later, but it's intermittently used on relatively low level personnel? What's the point? Make Americans afraid to work in Russia and Cuba?

I also wonder if we have a similar weapon and if there is retaliatory microwaving going on. e.g. You microwaved our bug checkers, now we're going to microwave your <Russian equivalent>.

Swenrekcah• 5 years ago

If the attack takes years or decades to have full cognitive detrimental effect, then it makes sense to attack the currently low-to-mid level staff.

mc32• 5 years ago

That doesn’t make sense. This isn’t baseball and you’re scouting for good prospects to sabotage.

As someone else pointed out it might be a side effect to something else.

XorNot4• 5 years ago

How widespread can this equipment be though that none has ever been recovered as a weapon of the enemy?

If you have enough resources to start targeting low to mid level staff, then you have to have a lot of practical devices which are mobile.

While it's plausible the US has in fact recovered a whole bunch of them and kept it secret...why? The microwave attack rumor is common which means everyone is looking into whether it can be done. Announcing you found the device and not showing pictures even - but instead nothing. No detectors either and as noted above detecting RF would be extremely cheap - deploy a couple of devices and you've got a direction finder telling you exactly where it's coming from.

Havana syndrome could be a lot of things: the US is a big place, and decades ago food safety standards and additives were very different - MRE composition or catered food service would have had regional characteristics, but so would just random events happening randomly - on a long enough timescale you'd get a cluster of health issues from the people you sent through one part of the world but not another. Once you're into talking about multi-decadal outcomes this gets even fuzzier.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr• 5 years ago

Can you please explain in more detail why it makes sense to attack low-level staff? I can’t follow. Is it because low-level staff rotates more often and is only a short time in the country so effects won’t be connected to their stay in Kuba?

enkid2• 5 years ago

It's possible it's a side effect of something else. Maybe they are using directed microwaves to power eavesdropping equipment, and the individuals in proximity to that equipment are getting sick.

teachingassist• 5 years ago

This makes it seem like friendly fire is a reasonable hypothesis - as some side-effect of physical security measures taken by the US government.

Since the reported attacks generally happen within a radius of US locations requiring physical security - and apparently not in any other location.

It's otherwise difficult to explain why the USA would be the singular target of these alleged attacks, for a period stretching across decades.

ogurechny• 5 years ago

Probably the most obvious explanation. I suppose that both attacking a diplomatic staff with a knife and just intentionally serving them contaminated food that puts them on the toilet for a couple of days would lead to some response. If something that can be easily identified with technical means produces no diplomatic response, then, despite the consequences, it's not considered an attack. Seems to be part of the job description. Most likely, they couldn't even ask politely, behind the curtains, to stop that because the answer would be “Sure, if you stop doing the same, too”. And none of that can be discussed openly because of the secrecy of spying technologies, so they have to invent stories about non-lethal weapons when the case could probably be described as “Major Ivanov, increase the power until we get a clear signal”.

When you start paying attention to these stories, it becomes clear that these secrets are kept first and foremost from the general public of the native countries, mostly for both public image and non-accountability privilege. It makes no sense to deny something that has been known to secret services of every developed country otherwise. It's quite ironic that before Snowden, military insurgents trained by this or that superpower, and mafia bosses who hired ex-special-agents had a more clear picture on, say, phone surveillance than law-abiding citizens.

pydry• 5 years ago

What's the point? Make Americans afraid to work in Russia and Cuba?

Wouldn't you want to deter spies from a fairly terrifying hostile power?

It's unclear if they did it (evidence seems thin) but the motive is definitely there, just as the motive for the Latin American "cancer gun" was definitely there:

https://english.pravda.ru/world/120158-south_america/

DubiousPusher4• 5 years ago

Based on the evidence it's just as likely these are some kind of functional disorder as the product of an attack. Be careful about believing things just based on what intelligence agents report.

cardanome4• 5 years ago

I wont fault people for lacking a basic understanding of science but at least using basic fact checking should be doable.

Like maybe google "microwave attacks snopes" or something: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/do-sonic-weapons-explain-t... (Written in 2017(!) but hey just lets just warm up the story again and again).

I am sorry for being snarky but between having to explain grown ass adults why they should wear masks during a pandemic I am tired for arguing against all the misinformation.

The average person has no idea how microwaves work so they are basically magic and easily to make some scary story up. Why change the time tested cold war approach of just throwing ridiculous lies against any perceived enemy of the US of A and see what sticks. If it doesn't stick the first time, just repeat and repeat it. The more often people hear it the more believable it seems.

GVIrish3• 5 years ago

That article doesn't disprove a microwave attack at all, it just says there is no known public evidence that matches up with what is described.

Fact is that if this is real, it is the work of a sophisticated adversary that may have found a novel way to attack people. Even going back to the 60's there was stuff done in spycraft that would seem implausible to most people even today.

A relevant example is the use of microwaves to activate a passive antenna through walls to eaves drop on conversations (look up "The Thing Listening Device). Again this was done many decades ago. Not too far fetched to consider that maybe Russia intelligence services found a way to weaponized microwaves.

markdown• 5 years ago

It isn't real.

cardanome4• 5 years ago

That article doesn't disprove a microwave attack at all, it just says there is no known public evidence that matches up with what is described.

I can not disprove that there is a magic man in the sky. Or a teapot revolving around the sun. [1]

The burden of proof is on the person making the claim not the other way round. Yes, lack of evidence is enough to reject it. Not to mention that the claim goes against established scientific knowledge and therefore would need some serious evidence for it to be taken serious.

Even going back to the 60's there was stuff done in spycraft that would seem implausible to most people even today.

There is lot's of things we do not know but that does not make a good argument for the existence of something.

A relevant example is the use of microwaves to activate a passive antenna through walls to eaves drop on conversations (look up "The Thing Listening Device). Again this was done many decades ago. Not too far fetched to consider that maybe Russia intelligence services found a way to weaponized microwaves.

Not really, there is no clear quantitative development patch from The Thing Listening Device to the Havana style microwave attack.

Now we know the hypotheses requiring the fewest assumptions to be more likely true. [2] So what is more likely?

The whole Havana Syndrome is fabricated propaganda that is typical and in line of many similar cases of proven lies?

Or that Cuba has some advanced secret technology that even the US has no access to and that they are using on US diplomatic personal without any good motivation. In fact it will hurt their reputation. So we need to also claim that they are irrationally evil.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

candiodari2• 5 years ago

But the problem with this sort of attitudes is that governments constantly lie. In a number of cases this is explainable. For instance, one way we do nuclear weapon containment is by lying about certain properties of Uranium (and of course mostly lie about lying, and of course, most researchers don't think it's particularly effective. While you need uranium to find the correct values, uranium + an old tv can tell you exactly what's being lied about and what the correct values are. Any experimental physicist leans how to do this).

But we are now in the situation that media in Europe are lying every day about the constant violence used by the police in Paris (and Brussels, and Madrid, and ...) against COVID-protestors. For example, just from today:

https://twitter.com/KevinTONON_/status/1388575836387880965

(Paris is usually much worse btw)

So you cannot trust these messages. Your argument is essentially an appeal to an authority. It is critically dependent on the authority not lying, and not leaving out critical information, and since you have no ability to figure out what they would lie about (and the State Dept has lied about their own people getting hurt and the causes many times).

That doesn't mean other sources are believable or not. The sources of these conspiracies do mean

1) people who were here were hurt.

2) the state department is not helping them.

3) the purpose of these denial messages is, at least in part, to justify 2).

I'm willing to bet that you at the very least think 2) is not true. So your careful fact checking has in fact lead you astray as well, because authorities, just like anyone else, serve their own interests.

skinkestek• 5 years ago

For example, just from today:
https://twitter.com/KevinTONON_/status/1388575836387880965

I don't know if it was correct for the police to get those people away, but from the video the police

1. didn't use force until someone started kicking against them etc

2. when people continued moving away police immediately left them alone

I was expecting police to run after someone who hadn't done anything or something but this looks like a quite ordinary example of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes".

You don't kick after a police officer (or anyone else for that matter) and act surprised when you get a beating.

That said I agree with much of the rest.

cardanome4• 5 years ago

But the problem with this sort of attitudes is that governments constantly lie.

Governments do lie and there have been many real conspiracies. I don't exactly see how that is a problem with what I wrote. Sure sometimes you have to more research than just look up snopes but the real conspiracies mostly have some realistic motivations and reasons behind them to explain them. Critical thinking can get you far.

While you need uranium to find the correct values, uranium + an old tv can tell you exactly what's being lied about and what the correct values are. Any experimental physicist leans how to do this).

Exactly, applying the scientific method to find out the truth works.

But we are now in the situation that media in Europe are lying every day about the constant violence used by the police in Paris (and Brussels, and Madrid, and ...) against COVID-protestors. For example, just from today:

Any measures fighting a pandemic are by nature authoritarian. That can not be helped and doesn't invalidate the measures.

Covid-19 is just the beginning. The more our world is globalized the more often will we have to deal with new viruses and the like. If we don't find a way to effectively contain these challenges we are looking at a world that I don't find particular worth living in. So you are barking up the wrong tree here.

1) people who were here were hurt.

Even this is not proven. The symptoms are very unspecific and might not be related to their work.

2) the state department is not helping them.

Maybe because of my answer to 1.

3) the purpose of these denial messages is, at least in part, to justify 2).

Again the whole arguments fails apart of as the 1st point is not proven.

adwi• 5 years ago

one way we do nuclear weapon containment is by lying about certain properties of Uranium (and of course mostly lie about lying, and of course, most researchers don't think it's particularly effective.

What is being lied about, and what is its truth?

leoc3• 5 years ago

Is your claim that the US EE professor and the US professor of neurosurgery quoted in the Snopes article are lying for their government, or that they are grossly incompetent?

leoc3• 5 years ago

The whole story of Polymeropoulos' visit to Russia is pretty odd even aside from his strange symptoms and the apparent attack. https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro... It sounds more than a bit like the farcical UK police visit to Moscow to investigate Alexander Litvinenko's poisoning https://news.sky.com/story/skripal-poisoning-police-must-be-... , which also saw the investigators becoming mysteriously unwell https://www.itv.com/news/2017-04-12/british-detective-i-was-... . Of course Cameron's UK government was reportedly not really that keen on having to do much about Russian espionage in the UK. You'd have to wonder if the Trump administration was likewise not really all that firmly behind the people they send to Moscow, or if the CIA's Russia experts saw trouble coming and managed to duck out of the asssignment, or perhaps both.

room505• 5 years ago

I added this this to another submission on hn and think many would be interested in what he personally has to say. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5jTbsvd3rA

bArray4• 5 years ago

Are microwave attacks something that is proven to exist? Can we replicate the effects on mice from some distance? Given the fact they pass through walls, this kind of bounds the frequency range the attacks could exist in... I would expect to see radio interference on nearby devices, etc (even if operating on a different frequency).

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if these could be self-manifesting symptoms from people experiencing burnout, etc. I think there is an example where some town put up a cell tower and everybody started complaining about headaches, despite it being turned off. I think all possibilities should be considered.

Honestly, if I were to attack diplomatic officials, it would be far easier to get them to ingest something. A slow acting toxin for example that you wouldn't normally be searching for on a postmortem - especially if all you're trying to achieve is to impair their mental agility to better your position in talks.

I know people working in foreign Countries who purposely pay more money for Western-import food to avoid accidentally doing this to themselves. In poorer locations you cannot be sure where or how the food was grown. For all you know it comes from an old lady's garden who lives next to the chemical processing facility. Locating the source of food in an completely un-tracked market will be near impossible.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

Yes,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon

2.4 GHz is used to heat your food in the microwave. Pulses that increase the fluence by an order of magnitude or more could probably boil water for a microsecond inside the brain and cause some strange reactions.

What is unproven though, is how one would ever shrink the size of an electronic weapon like this.

saalweachter• 5 years ago

The Active Denial System, listed on your link, causes pain by heating water in the skin.

What is the proposed system for getting microwaves past the skin into the brain without creating the same effect as the ADS?

nabla93• 5 years ago

Microwave transmitters are not that big. 4 kW generator or 100 kW pulse generator fits into a suitcase.

What you need is a horn antenna that directs the beam from the distance, across the street for example. It's also possible to have multiple horns around the target. Only in the intersection of the beams the radiation reaches dangerous levels.

im3w1l• 5 years ago

You don't need to shrink it. Just go to the 5g antennas in the vicinity and press the big red "activate death ray" button.

bqmjjx0kac• 5 years ago

I imagine a direct beam would cause visible burns, but something that never occurred to me is using beamforming to zap inside someone's head. Yikes.

Disclaimer: I'm not a physicist.

andi9994• 5 years ago

If liquid in your brain boils, wouldn't you also just turn blind (since the eyeball gets damaged by heat)

Jenda_3• 5 years ago

Do you have any sources regarding the effect of pulses, e.g. in animal studies? Most materials I have found are dealing with average/CW power. (I work with weather radars, so I was doing some research recently to find out what I should do to not die)

oh_sigh• 5 years ago

This reminds me of the "I figured out what was wrong with my brain" post from a few days ago.

The entire blog was written as if the cause was "overthinking" and he physically depleted some resource in his brain leading to seizures. In reality the illness he linked to clearly states that it is a psychological condition of being overworked/stressed, and treatment needs to be "culturally sensitive" and done with CBT, which would not be the case if you were just missing some chemical in your brain.

ipaddr• 5 years ago

The psychological effects could be side effects of a miss chemical. Even after adding the missing chemical psychological issues may need to be dealt with.

pklee• 5 years ago

Interestingly I was listening to this podcast yesterday - https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/76hgkmv/havana-synd... Analysis all the possibilities through interview with experts. Hope you find it interesting

bArray4• 5 years ago

Appreciated! Will give it a listen.

dv_dt• 5 years ago

Wouldn’t it be ironic if this was some secret comm equipment that the US is installing in its own embassies

cookguyruffles• 5 years ago

The same idea crossed my mind. Those embassies are chock full of magical equipment, US embassies sometimes have radio-transparent walls for unspecified reasons ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_... )

bArray4• 5 years ago

I wouldn't even be surprised. Like a 500W transceiver using encrypted radio signals by the sides of their bed. The boss says "you better keep an eye on this thing, even in your sleep!" - and all the high ranking officials keep their communications device right next to their heads as they sleep.

andi9994• 5 years ago

To me this (the microwave part) just sounds like jumping to conclusions. I mean why not some (toxic) knock out gas? It reminds me of the cartoon pinky and the brain:`we use microwave and coffee creamer, everybody will believe our miracle, because nobody knows how these things work.

bingbong70• 5 years ago

One of the leaked NSA slides from 2013-2015 included an electromagnetic weapon that was supposedly used to exfiltrate data from air gapped systems by turning humans (or any living thing with high water content) in a given area into WiFi antennas.

If anyone else remembers the slides detailing this device please post the source.

sigg3• 5 years ago

It's "just" TEMPEST in the nth iteration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_%28codename%29

throwaway639035• 5 years ago

Not a proof, but several years ago I found this [1] document from a FOIA request on "Bioeffects of Selected Nonlethal Weapon" and I found it interesting enough to save a copy. Specific section is "Incapacitating Effect: Microwave Hearing".

[1] https://legislature.mi.gov/documents/2013-2014/CommitteeDocu...

Edit: ocr-ed version here:

https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/files/Bioeffec...

tediousdemise8• 5 years ago

The US government tortured people at Guantanamo for 14 years, so I wonder how long they’ve been irradiating their diplomats.

01100011• 5 years ago

A slow acting toxin for example

Afflatoxin. Common in food and gives you liver cancer.

jchook• 5 years ago

The USSR irradiated the US embassy in Moscow with microwaves from 1953 to 1979. Later analysis showed virtually no health impacts and no increase in mortality.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30676008/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509929/

matthewdgreen• 5 years ago

I just finished "The Spy in Moscow Station" which talks about these signals. Although this isn't a direct response to your point about mortality, an interesting feature of the Moscow (Microwave) Signal is that it -- considered as a surveillance threat, rather than a health threat -- also received a lot of the same skepticism I'm seeing in this thread.

The TL;DR is that various agencies strongly resisted attempts to dig into why the USSR was directing microwaves at the embassy, despite the fact that the USSR had already been caught placing microwave-powered listening devices inside the building. The book describes an argument between State, CIA and NSA in which the former two mostly wanted to ignore the signals. The belief was (1) that no technology had been demonstrated that these signals could exploit, and (2) even after the NSA cooked up some examples, people refused to believe that the USSR was sophisticated enough to exploit them. (I won't spoil the book by giving away the resolution.)

I'm not offering this as any kind of proof that the current batch of Havana syndrome cases is real: just pointing out that while "we've never seen it before so it probably doesn't exist" can be a reasonable heuristic in day-to-day life, it's not necessarily a great one in the world of spying.

ArnoVW• 5 years ago

I imagine the conclusion of the book was that the microwave was used to send energy to a listening device inside the ambassy? (same technology as the contactless smart cards used in public transport)

A famous instance of this is 'the thing' :

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

owenversteeg• 5 years ago

Worth noting that the exposure at the Moscow embassy was a fraction of what you would get from a cellphone in your pocket. So I don’t think it’s a good way to show that this is safe.

eternalban• 5 years ago

From your first cite, there are some interesting tidbits to consider:

Interesting to learn that USSR (& associated block) had set a safe exposure level of 0.010 mW/cm2, while in US the level was set in 1953 to, and remains at, 10 mW/cm2 for GHz freq. range.

The paper notes (and it is worth quoting at length in the context of this thread):

"It is essential to understand the historical context in which this episode occurred. On the one hand, the Soviets had considerable experience in researching the biological effects of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields, while the Americans had experimented with microwaves as a weapon of mind control. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that with this background, the matter was considered to be so significant.

...

"It was certainly suspicious that the Soviets had a maximum exposure level 1000 times lower than that of the Americans. What did the USSR know about the effects of microwaves that the US did not know? As pointed out by Guthrie (11), the standards in the US were approved in 1953 and were based on theoretical considerations, under the assumption that microwave radiation produced only thermal effects on biological systems, and that these effects could not be cumulative as microwaves are non-ionizing. Guthrie (11) recognized that, by 1977, several medical studies had already cast serious doubt on previous assumptions.

"For example, Dr. Milton Zaret, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at the New York University-Bellevue Medical Center, who had conducted several microwave investigations for the US government, said, “The American National Standard Institute’s standard is not a safe standard. Instead, it is a statement defining the highest possible degree of occu- pational risk. It was based solely on whole body thermal burden calculations. It ignored the question of organ sensitivity and delayed effects following chronic low-level exposure” (11).

"Professor Herman Schwan of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the proponents of the 10 mW/cm2 standard, stated “No one knows whether safe exposure standards, which may be appropriate for adults, are so for children” (11).

"However, as Guthrie (11) explained, the Soviet bloc also had other safety standards. At the Symposium on the Biological Effects and Health Implications of Micro- wave Radiation, held in 1970, Karel Marha of Czechoslovakia explained that they had proposed a standard of 0.01 mW/cm2, as it was recognized that there was evidence of biological effects up to levels of 0.1 mW/cm2, so a safety factor of 10 had been proposed until finally deciding on the standard of 0.01 mW/cm2. These maximum levels were introduced to prevent not only damage to the organ- ism but also any unpleasant subjective feelings. In addition, the standard in Czechoslovakia was lowered to 0.001 mW/cm2 when it was assumed that exposure did not occur during a working day, but over a 24-h period."

"The Soviets were, however, not the only ones deeply interested in this issue; the Americans had, since the 1950s, been investigating the possible use of microwaves as a weapon of mind control.

"As Krishnan (10) explains, in the 1950s the CIA had looked into the use of electromagnetic fields for mind control purposes as part of its MK ULTRA project. MK ULTRA was a top secret program first set up in the late 1940s to investigate behavioral modification and the control of individual minds in the service of American geopolitical and ideological interests (24).

"Subproject 62 of MK ULTRA was run by the neurosurgeon Maitland Baldwin, and aimed to analyze the effect of electromagnetic waves on monkeys. This was one of 149 subprojects designed by the CIA, and was entitled “Effects of radio-frequency energy on primate cerebral activity” (25). In one of these experiments, monkeys were exposed to high-powered (100 V) frequencies of 388 MHz, resulting in several changes in the electroencephalogram, as well as arousal and drowsiness. In addition, he observed lethal effects after just a few minutes of exposure (10).

"Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist who actively partici- pated in the MK ULTRA project, carried out experiments using personnel from the purpose-built Radio Telemetry Laboratory, probably with the intention of finding out more about the effects of the microwave bombardment of the American embassy. In 1965, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) commissioned the Walter Reed Army Medical Center Research Institute and the Johns Hopkins University to study the possible bio- logical effects of microwave exposure on humans, in what was dubbed the Pandora Project (10).

"As Krishnan (10) also pointed out, Dr. Milton Zaret acknowledged that effects on the nervous system due to microwave exposure were possible, and Robert O. Becker, twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on the effects of electromagnetic fields on living tissues, indicated in an interview to the BBC in 1984 that he thought it was unquestionable that exposure could produce disturbances in the central nervous system. Becker did not believe that, with the technology avail- able at the time, someone could be made to instantly fall asleep, but that exposure to microwaves could possibly interfere in an individual’s decision-making ability. This could produce a situation of chronic stress resulting in the embassy staff operating less efficiently than usual, to the obvious advantage of the Soviets.

"Weinberger (26) tells how the Americans themselves deceived the embassy staff when, in 1965, doctors began performing blood tests. The staff were told that the doctors were looking for a new virus but, in reality, they wanted to integrate the information obtained into the Pandora Project. In October 1965, Richard Cesaro took over the DARPA Program Plan 562, the technical name of the Pandora Project. Cesaro had been responsible for translating dozens of Soviet investigations into this subject, and realized that the neurological effects of microwaves fascinated the enemy.

"As Weinberger (26) continues, the Pandora project involved experiments on monkeys carried out in government laboratories rather than universities, due to the top- secret nature of the project. The monkeys were exposed to the same signal levels that the embassy received in Moscow. The results were not subject to peer review but, in Decem- ber of 1966, Cesaro reported that the first monkey involved in the tests had shown erratic and repetitive behavior, which led him to assert that it was unquestionable that the signal had penetrated the central nervous system and caused changes in the assigned work functions. He was so convinced by the results that he recommended that the Pentagon immediately begin to investigate potential military applications, and requested that the project be extended to include experiments on humans, something that certain sections within the CIA viewed with suspicion, as it was too reminiscent of the questionable practices of the MK ULTRA project. It was May of 1969 and the scientific committee of Pandora was considering extend- ing the study to include eight humans, but in the end this did not occur as the results of experiments carried out on primates were still being reviewed and there were doubts over whether this behavioral change was in fact produced by the microwave signals. In 1968, Dr. James McIlwain took over the Pandora Project and, after reviewing the results thus far obtained, concluded that the microwave signals did not result in the ability to control the minds of the monkeys.

"As Weinberger (26) concludes, in 1969 DARPA ended its support for Pandora, and Cesaro was fired. At the end of the decade, the American intelligence services claimed that the Soviets had used these waves not to control the minds of diplomats, but to activate listening devices on the walls of the building."

The refs cited are:

10: Krishnan A. Military neuroscience and the coming age of neuro-warfare. Routledge, 2017.

11: Guthrie LB. Legal implications of the Soviet microwave bombardment of the US Embassy. Boston College Int Comp Law Rev 1977;1:Article, 6

24: Lemov R. Brainwashing’s avatar: the curious career of Dr. Ewen Cameron. Grey Room 2011;45:60–87.

25: Ross CA. The CIA Doctors: human rights violations by American psychiatrists. Richardson, TX: Manitou Communications, 2006.

26: Weinberger S. The secret history of diplomats and invisible weapons, 2017, August 25. Retrieved from: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/25/the-secret-history-of-d...

imwillofficial2• 5 years ago

This comment is the reason I come to HN. I wish I could offer one fifth of the utility of this commenter. Thanks!

ford_x• 5 years ago

How do W/cm2 relate to W/kg (used e.g. in https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055...)? Furthermore, if I have a detector, that gives only the number of W, will it be equal to W/cm2?

LatteLazy2• 5 years ago

People do love an unsolved mystery...

reedf1• 5 years ago

Can't you just get a spectrum analyser to detect things like this? Did technology like that not exist in this era?

Johnythree3• 5 years ago

Yes, and it wouldn't need to be a sensitive spectrum analyser.

If the RF field is strong enough to affect human tissue, then a crude broadband RF detector would do the job.

Something as simple as a wire dipole and a schottky diode with a meter.

Plus in such a strong field, most of your domestic electronics equipment would be going crazy. Just like a mobile phone near a blue tooth speaker.

jasonhansel• 5 years ago

A question: why doesn't the government just expose Havana syndrome sufferers to various frequencies of microwaves and ask if it "sounds the same" as the sonic attacks? That would seem like a good way of ruling it out as a possibility.

totalZero6• 5 years ago

Apart from that being destructive testing, my guess is that the first time you burn something feels different than the second time you burn it. So you may well end up doing more damage without obtaining conclusive results.

tediousdemise8• 5 years ago

During Obama’s term, US-Cuba relations dramatically improved, with fewer travel restrictions and other dealings. Cuba was on track to having the embargo removed.

The “microwave attack” story came out in mid-2017 when Trump was in office. Travel restrictions came back and foreign relations languished. It’s trivially easy to blame a nation state for an attack, and then use it as excuse to end political support, agreements, or funding.

Cuba has been the repeated target of bullying by the United States for the better half of the last century, despite no recent transgressions other than most-likely-fabricated ones such as these “microwave attacks.”

thepasswordis• 5 years ago

1) These things started in 2016, before Trump was in office.

2) The US isn’t the only country claiming this is happening.

3) It is still happening, now, in 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome

tediousdemise8• 5 years ago

In 2017, President Donald Trump accused Cuba of perpetrating unspecified attacks causing these symptoms.

Although the attacks were hearsay, immediate political actions were taken against Cuban diplomats who were likely working to lift the embargo:

In August 2017, the United States expelled two Cuban diplomats in response to the illnesses.

Despite zero evidence, Cuba was rapidly blamed in gross political fashion:

In October 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump said that "I do believe Cuba's responsible. I do believe that", going on to say "And it's a very unusual attack, as you know. But I do believe Cuba is responsible."

Why would Cuba jeopardize its warming relationship with the US? This is textbook propaganda.

bigbillheck• 5 years ago

The only 'transgression' Cuba's done is its unwillingness to be a US puppet state.

totalZero6• 5 years ago

Cuba isn't exactly Switzerland. It has a long history of being a Soviet puppet state during the 20th century, and a nucleation site for anti-US activities elsewhere in Latin America. Furthermore, there would be no Maduro regime without the influence of Cuba, and that regime is expressly pro-Russia and destructive to Venezuela.

Let's not distill away the complexity of the situation.

sneak2• 5 years ago

My favorite theory (I think from an HN comment?) about Havana syndrome is simple poisoning. It fits the observed symptoms better than magic, wall-jumping microwaves.

tediousdemise8• 5 years ago

Food poisoning makes sense. I got a bad case of Moctezuma’s revenge[0] when I visited Cuba a few years ago.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Montezuma%27s%20r...

sneak2• 5 years ago

After years of playing down the reports and failing to provide proper medical care for the victims, Washington is now clearly alarmed at the implications of the attacks.

An important reminder to anyone who thinks that putting themselves in harm's way to do jobs for the US spying apparatus is a good idea. They won't even care for you when you get injured on the job, sacrificing yourself for their cause.

throwaway478543• 5 years ago

A Canadian study came to the conclusion that aggressive pesticide spraying is likely to blame for the Havana syndrome: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/havana-syndrome-neurotoxin-en...

avaldes• 5 years ago

Why media and government keep calling them "attacks"? If three letters agencies are so eager to call them attacks I suppose they know how that would work and they have similar tech right? If so, is there any documented case of "washington syndrome" in russian/chinese/iranian diplomats? (Sorry for my english)

whereis14• 5 years ago

There's been much skepticism in recent years about whether microwaves were the cause of these officers' conditions.

This news confirms that govt agencies are taking the microwave theory seriously as a confirmed explanation for these conditions. It's reasonable to agree with the conclusion at this point.

tsimionescu7• 5 years ago

Its never reasonable to agree with the opaque conclusions of spy agencies in any country, especially when the conclusion points the finger at a hostile pwoer.

There is literally no reason to believe public communications from a spy agency against their enemies (note: that does not mean that they can't be true, it just means that the truth of them is never the reason why the communication is put out).

whereis14• 5 years ago

This presumes a conspiracy amongst officers forced into early retirement to create a convincing false narrative.

What reason would the USIC have for lying about this? It seems unlikely that we would ever retaliate in kind, especially not after bringing attention to these incidents.

DubiousPusher4• 5 years ago

“They said it was a ‘no-brainer’ that this medical condition was due to an attack.”

Exactly not the kind of people who should be allowed to investigate anything. Not even who framed Roger Rabbit much less a claim of international warfare committed with a secret ray gun.

andi9994• 5 years ago

Yes. Also if you look at the choice of words this citation only claims an attack, but not microwave attack.

tediousdemise8• 5 years ago

Donald Trump: I believe Cuba is responsible. Swiftly expels Cuban diplomats from the US and restricts travel to Cuba.

Regardless of what has been injuring people, it is quite clear that the US has blamed what happened on Cuba and took decisive political actions, without evidence to support Cuba’s involvement. It is par for the course with how they’ve treated Cuba in the past.

koonsolo• 5 years ago

I remember a US embassy where they had all kinds of antennas in the attic, to spy on communication.

Is it possible that Cuba is trying to block the spectrum so they can't use this technique?

Johnythree3• 5 years ago

Easy to filter out the microwave jammer.

How do you think radio comms work on a warship equipped with high power radars?

Or even on a domestic airliner?

And of course if it were happening, the communications techs would be well aware of it.

amai• 5 years ago

"The microwave auditory effect, also known as the microwave hearing effect or the Frey effect, consists of the human perception of audible clicks, or even speech, induced by pulsed or modulated radio frequencies. The communications are generated directly inside the human head without the need of any receiving electronic device."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect

dukeofdoom• 5 years ago

Arafat dying of cancer soon after not signing peace accord?

Giorgi2• 5 years ago

Ok but Hacker News told me it was crickets and poor Russians was being demonized. Then, when I mentioned it again, butthurt users tried to bury it. Now we are back at it again?

unethical_ban• 5 years ago

Don't complain about reactions from one set of users in a new thread. "Butthurt" isn't a way to refer to other people here, either. This isn't reddit. Finally, yes, multiple discussions about a singular topic occur on this site regularly.

Giorgi2• 5 years ago

I am not complaining, I am educating you on the facts. Don't act butthurt.

Havana syndrome: NSA officer’s case hints at microwave attacks since 90s

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