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US Employee in China Suffers Brain Injury in Case Recalling Cuba Sound 'Attack'
- Shank 8y agoNo matter what the physical cause of the injury is, it's trivial to create false attribution with it. It happened first in Cuba, so Cuba got a lot of blame. Now it's happening in China. Did China come up with the same brilliant idea? Buy it from Cuba? Or did they both just end up with shoddy surveillance equipment? If I had to guess, it's probably the latter. No matter the cause, though, if you knew how to do it you could pull off the attack in [insert questionable country here] and create suspicion for that country. It would be a really fast and effective way to create diplomatic tension for a third party who stands to gain from the breakdown of communication.
- Iwan-Zotow 8y agoThe only common ground to those cases are americans in US consulates. So logical conclusion is it is case of self-shooting in the foot - Us spy equipment malfunctioning etc
- burger_moon 8y agoWouldn't they (US gov't) want to keep this out of the media then? Does it make sense to have it run around the media if it was from malfunctioning equipment. This is under the assumption they would realize it's their equipment before publicizing the event.
- armitron 8y agoIt's hard to keep something like this out of the media and trying to do so could backfire and create an even bigger mess. Going public is really the only response that makes strategic sense, irrespective of the causal factor.
- Chaebixi 8y ago> So logical conclusion is it is case of self-shooting in the foot - Us spy equipment malfunctioning etc A logical conclusion, not the logical conclusion. I think this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135012) does a better job of starting to enumerate the possible causes.
- danielvf 8y agoThe Cuba “attacks” took place at houses and hotel rooms, not actually in or around government buildings.
- cgh 8y agoNo, Canadians were also affected. https://globalnews.ca/news/3956401/eight-canadians-sickened-in-mysterious-cuba-attacks-rcmp-leading-investigation/ https://globalnews.ca/news/3956401/eight-canadians-sickened-...
- natch 8y agoThat doesn't say much, because it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the US shares some equipment (made up example: ultrasonic or other anti-jamming technology) or other technology with Canada. If it was a country way less friendly to the US than Canada (or even less friendly, if you want to make the questionable argument that Canada is not friendly to the US), that would be a better indicator.
- cgh 8y agoI was objecting to the phrase "only americans in US consulates", when clearly it's not. Kind of pedantic, I know. That said, asserting that it's not "beyond the realm of possibility" that this phenomena might affect US allies because of shared equipment is pure conjecture. Many things about this are not beyond the realm of possibility.
- Iwan-Zotow 8y ago5 eyes inter-agency cooperation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement
- Chaebixi 8y ago> It would be a really fast and effective way to create diplomatic tension for a third party who stands to gain from the breakdown of communication. Assuming they can keep their involvement secret, which is not a given.
- solnet99 8y agoA simple google maps search shows that the US Consulate and the Cuban Consulate in Guangzhou are exactly 1 block away from each other. Don't dismiss the Cubans from responsibility.
- thawkins 8y agoWhat about shoddy US anti-surveillance equipment (ultrasonic microphone jammers), after all the only common denominator here is "US Embassy".
- huhtenberg 8y agoLogically speaking, it's either of: 1. These are unrelated 2. The cause is specific to the setup/operation of the US consulates themselves 3. Both Cubans (or Russians) and Chinese are using 3rd party spy tech that causes that Anything else?
- amputect 8y agoI was pretty amused by the suggestion in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135061 that it's actually US spy equipment that is malfunctioning and causing the problem, but it's honestly not totally implausible.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- falcon620 8y agoI bet on this angle.
- simplicio 8y agoI dunno. Seems like it would be trivial for the US to figure out that the phenomenon corresponded to whatever change in their gear caused it.
- envy2 8y agoThat doesn't readily explain the Canadians impacted by this in Cuba, though.
- bdamm 8y agoCanadians and Americans do share a lot of equipment, due to a common supply market. That is not the only reason.
- Iwan-Zotow 8y agowell, there is an answer for that : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement
- themodelplumber 8y agoIt seems like we'd know by now (I mean here in the US) whether there are sounds that 1) can cause mild TBI symptoms and 2) are only just barely [0] detectable. Mild TBI symptoms include [1]: - May remain conscious or may experience a loss of consciousness for a few seconds or minutes. - Headache - Confusion - Lightheadedness - Dizziness - Blurred vision or tired eyes - Ringing in the ears - Bad taste in the mouth - Fatigue or lethargy - A change in sleep patterns - Behavioral or mood changes - Trouble with memory, concentration, attention, or thinking I'm guessing that since this has hit the media via [1] and Pompeo's reporting, the "employee personal/performance problem" angle has been ruled out. 0. "subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure" -- https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/ha-05232018/ https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/ha-05232018/ 1. https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/All-Disorders/Traumatic-Brain-Injury-Information-Page https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/All-Disorders/Traumatic-...
- alexandercrohde 8y agoSeems like the parties with multibillion dollar budgets (i.e. Nations) need to make a credible effort to work on technologies to detect/track-down these devices. Then this eavesdropping arms-race that is hurting innocents can stop.
- anandkulkarni 8y agoKevin Fu and team at UMich's security & privacy group provided the most plausible explanation for what's going on here. https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/how-we-reverse-engineered-the-cuban-sonic-weapon-attack https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/how-we-reve...
- jimrandomh 8y agotl;dr: Two ultrasound devices in the same room can interact to produce audible sound at dangerous volume under some circumstances. Ultrasound devices include bugs, microphone jammers, and many other things.
- mhb 8y agoAlso tl;dr: They don't explain anything about how that can cause the observed symptoms.
- tryAtHome 8y agoProbably because it's possible for people to implement these sort of weapons, and they don't want terrible people inflicting somewhat untraceable brain damage on unsuspecting victims, seemingly out of the blue. If they're leaving out explicit (or even the vaguest) details, it probably means that's the only thing keeping this out of the hands of weirdos. Also, other layers of secrecy are likely in play. It's probably already known that such weapons do exactly these things, but how would people even know, without published research? Top secret military experiments? Private research performed by military contractors? (in other words, takes one to know one)
- gruez 8y agobut if you have two 60db transmitters, the max you can produce (from my understanding) with constructive interference is 70db , since db is logarithmic. so does that mean the transmitters in question were already transmitting at 100+db?
- 8y ago
- ww520 8y agoCould those ultrasound based jamming devices used to thwart eavesdropping be the ones causing the problem?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- grumblestumble 8y agoHoly shit, they finally built the Urine Box. edit: since I'm getting downvoted, here's a link for the millenials to one of the greatest BBS-era hoaxes of all time: http://cd.textfiles.com/group42/PHREAK/BOXES/URINE.HTM http://cd.textfiles.com/group42/PHREAK/BOXES/URINE.HTM
- mason182 8y agoyou are all wrong, its this... 5g technology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8jAiFwlE3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8jAiFwlE3M
- solnet99 8y agoA simple google maps search shows that the US Consulate and the Cuban Consulate in Guangzhou are exactly 1 block away from each other. Don't dismiss the Cubans from responsibility.
- gruez 8y ago>in Guangzhou
- posterboy 8y agoDo you have any idea about the energy levels needed to get ultrasound through even a few meters of air, not to mention concrete, and glass probably doesn't help either. Not to mention for highly localized beamwave-wavefront peaks. I don't really, but 100 feet distance would include somuch noise from heat convection and whatnot that a simple targeted ultrasound canon so tonspeak would be mere fantasy.
- anotheracc23 8y agoA write up about the Cuba incident - https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4603 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4603 tl;dr; he concluded this was the result of a "mass psychogenic event".
- nickysielicki 8y agoGetting deeply into amateur radio in the past year has really changed my perspective on the world around me. You start to get frustrated by cheap power supplies ruining your reception, you start to curse plasma TVs and power lines, etc. It gives you perspective for how limited our senses truly are, relative to the insane amount of general noise that things make. This is especially illustrated by things like RF-Capture by some MIT students, see their paper "Capturing a Coarse Human Figure Through a Wall" [1]. Signals are going to be weaponized in ways that we cannot imagine, a very loud but humanly imperceptible transmitter is only the beginning. [1]: http://rfcapture.csail.mit.edu/rfcapture-paper.pdf http://rfcapture.csail.mit.edu/rfcapture-paper.pdf
- vvanders 8y agoYeah, I'm a little depressed to move soon from a S2 location to S5-6 if my shortwave radio is any measure. Don't get me started about Powerline Ethernet. That shit is straight up FCC-violating RF garbage.
- Hengjie 8y agoCould you explain more about what the Powerline interference are? #explainitlikeImfive
- toomuchtodo 8y agoTurns your entire house into an antenna that radiates across useful frequencies. Like whispering between two people while a tornado siren is going off 100 feet away. "Unfortunately these devices tend to wipe out almost the entire HF spectrum for anyone listening nearby. As household powerline cables are not shielded for RF emissions they radiate in the HF spectrum quite heavily." https://www.rtl-sdr.com/showing-the-hf-interference-problem-from-ethernet-over-powerline-devices/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/showing-the-hf-interference-problem-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IW3FVhHR58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IW3FVhHR58
- vvanders 8y agoThink of every wire that connects your outlets together, generally these are pretty long. Powerline Ethernet turns those wires into antennas so you get things like this[1]. When you're talking about radio waves there's two power measurements PEP and ERP. PEP is roughly what wattage a radio is spec'd at. ERP is PEP * Antenna Gain, so your long runs of wire make them a high gain antenna. To use a poor car analogy PEP = horsepower, ERP = 0-60mph. Powerline is a motorcycle, not a lot of HP but still stupid quick(loud). What makes this even worse is that since your wires are different length is means the noise is pretty wide-band(every frequency) and so it's not something that can be easily filtered. [1] https://youtu.be/6IW3FVhHR58?t=91 https://youtu.be/6IW3FVhHR58?t=91
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mikekij 8y agoWasn’t the Cuba incident determined to be caused by interference between two US ultrasound surveillance devices?
- thawkins 8y agoOne moment George, lets turn on the portable anti microphone device that the embassy gave us, before we discuss this. Hmmm. I seem to be developing a headache.
- chx 8y agoCheck https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135349 this answer and thread.
- basicplus2 8y agoSymptoms suggest microwaves at work
- aaron695 8y agoHow fucking fucking stupid do you have to be to not know this is Mass Hysteria? The proof was just so obvious from day one. NOOOOO proof of physical damage (Yes I've read the 100's or articles that talk about it, none of them say there is proof of physical damage, or sometimes they do and reference an article that says there isn't) Noooo proof of other long term damage, same as above. Just normal old sickness consistent with the stress of working away from home in a foreign country. Fuck this is a huge joke. If bored....... google fainting in Cambodia. It happens in Garment Factories a lot but also Schools. It's a known form of Mass Hysteria even thought the papers often report different. All said, Mass Hysteria IS a medical condition, nothing to be ashamed of and can point to underlying issues. In the Cambodia school is was stress about exams. Here it just points to the inability of the US departments to self correct and back down.
- leonkilat 8y agodoes anyone actually believe in this 'sound attack'? why didn't any of the Cubans working in the US embassy in Cuba suffer from the supposed ill effects. Is there something different about American biology that makes them susceptible to these attacks?
- no_identd 8y agoBoxspring mattresses have interesting RF properties.
- kawfey 8y agoThey have been used as antennas before: https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/60z2av/the_official_ny7n_bedspring_challenge/ https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/60z2av/the_of...
- ommunist 8y agoSyphilis, late stage.