10 ms·

Reposting from an earlier post. Here's a pair of twitter threads detailing why this seems like unsubstantiated nonsense, one posted after this was announced an

Reposting from an earlier post. Here's a pair of twitter threads detailing why this seems like unsubstantiated nonsense, one posted after this was announced and one with access to the report. https://mobile.twitter.com/weinbergersa/status/1335096557079842817 https://mobile.twitter.com/weinbergersa/status/1335096557079... https://mobile.twitter.com/weinbergersa/status/1335304431756341248 https://mobile.twitter.com/weinbergersa/status/1335304431756... Just a ton of hot air blown for no purpose

hedora 6y ago
The Russians definitely were working on this fifty years ago, and it produced symptoms consistent with many independent reports from US agents and people that suffered collateral damage. The twitter thread’s main objection seems to be that the US is not publishing plans describing the secret Russian weapon. In other news, the CIA was politically unable to do anything about these attacks for fear of angering Trump. Now that he’s on the way out, it’s not surprising they’re beginning to take action. It is sickening that the US government was unable to protect its own agents for the last four years because of interference from the White House.
- fastball 6y ago
  > It is sickening that the US government was unable to protect its own agents for the last four years because of interference from the White House. Citation needed.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  >The Russians definitely were working on this fifty years ago, and it produced symptoms consistent with many independent reports from US agents and people that suffered collateral damage The twitter thread mentions this. It involved a bombardment of microwave rays that was detected. How would a similar attack evade detection now? >The twitter thread’s main objection seems to be that the US is not publishing plans describing the secret Russian weapon. Even without publishing the plans, if you think a microwave weapon caused this event you should be able to explain how it would function. >Now that he’s on the way out, it’s not surprising they’re beginning to take action. Taking action is a report that took months to complete with no strong conclusion?
  - totalZero 6y ago
    > The twitter thread mentions this. It involved a bombardment of microwave rays that was detected. How would a similar attack evade detection now? Sounds like something they could have worked on in the past half-century. Detection of a narrowly focused burst of radiation would be fairly challenging if you're outside of whatever volumetric detection zone is generated by the attack device. How would you differentiate it from other RF interference? > if you think a microwave weapon caused this event you should be able to explain how it would function. I don't see what exists to be gained by explaining the function of a weapon that jeopardizes and frightens your diplomats. If the claims are true, then there is nobody to convince here; the US is going to act internally on its own information, and the alleged foreign actors involved are going to spread their own disinformation accordingly.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      >I don't see what exists to be gained by explaining the function of a weapon that jeopardizes and frightens your diplomats. Why would that be more frightening than releasing a report saying they were probably attacked by an unknown microwave weapon? I think a radiation beam powerful enough to hurt people as described but able to avoid detection seems unlikely. Anything similar to interference is unlikely to cause damage.
    - janekm 6y ago
      Radio receivers (and the LNA component of such) are incredibly sensitive... that's what allows all the radio systems we use daily to work at all. If a signal is strong enough to have a physiological effect on the human body it is many many orders of magnitude stronger than can be measured with off-the-shelf instruments (i.e. an antenna and spectrum analyser). Even if you make an effort to concentrate the effect in a specific spot (e.g. phased array antennas), you can only achieve a moderate reduction (e.g. 1-2 orders of magnitude) outside the central lobe. It will be easily detectable outside the effective area.
- simion314 6y ago
  If this is such an old known weapon why are walls not insulated or some detectors placed in this buildings?
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > If this is such an old known weapon why are walls not insulated or some detectors placed in this buildings? IIRC, most diplomats live in private residential areas, not in an embassy compound.
    - simion314 6y ago
      Aren't the important guys living inside the embassy? if not you would still protect their homes if this weapon would exist and US knows about it. If it exists for 50 years and somehow US is incapable to protect against it or prove it was used then what does this mean?
      - ardy42 6y ago
        Maybe ambassadors do, but it's not like they can run the show on their own. US embassies are pretty large operations with many different functions. IIRC, the people who think they were targeted by that weren't ambassadors, and at least some were involved in intelligence missions.
        simion314 6y ago
        Still I expect US intelligence would know all the side effects of this weapon and not have to struggle identifying it, I expect they tested it 50 years ago already (same how they tested radiation effects, brain washing with drugs and all the other disturbing experiments they did)
        ardy42 6y ago
        > Still I expect US intelligence would know all the side effects of this weapon and not have to struggle identifying it, I expect they tested it 50 years ago already You seem to be assuming US intelligence is as scarily competent as it is in the movies. For instance even if they did test something similar 50 years ago, in the real world, all the people with that expertise would have retired long ago. To put it in perspective (with an imperfect analogy): 50 years ago, software engineers were writing code in COBOL and IBM 360 assembler, how quickly would a senior Java developer be able to parachute in and figure out and fix a subtle bug in an application written with those technologies?
cpncrunch 6y ago
It's really just all speculation, and doesn't fit the facts very well. If two people are in the same room and only one has symptoms, it is unlikely to be microwaves. Also, the brain imaging study just found differences in grey/white matter compared to controls, but that tends to vary quite a lot in the general population, and isn't evidence of brain damage. Overall, FND seems to be the most plausible explanation at the moment.
- Sporktacular 6y ago
  Microwaves can be highly directional, beams can be transmitted in much narrower than the width of rooms. It fits some facts fairly well, modulated microwaves could induce audible frequencies at various points of the head involved in audio perception. As mentioned elsewhere though, signals intelligence at diplomatic posts (see Stateroom and the SCS) would likely have detected at least lower frequency microwave energy. At higher frequencies it is less commonly used for communications and hence less likely to be monitored. Don't know why everyone is expecting solid proof here. There's a reasonable chance this would have been detected, but we're unlikely to know even if it was. Microwaves are still a plausible explanation.
  - cpncrunch 6y ago
    >Don't know why everyone is expecting solid proof here Occam's razor. Doctors see these symptoms many times every day. For some reason, embassy staff are different from the rest of us humans, and we have to concoct some incredibly implausible reason for their symptoms.
    - Sporktacular 6y ago
      So the occurrence rate of brain abnormalities, dizziness, loss of balance, early onset Parkinson's, hearing loss and anxiety in the US embassy in Havana are all in line with those of the general public? or those among diplomats in other posts? Is this a fact, because I am not aware. "Doctors see these symptoms many times every day" Thats why it's called a syndrome - no one positive indicator. The possibilities of it being crickets or mass hysteria have been put forward before. The authors obviously decided these explanations didn't fit the clinical observations, and I suspect they're thorough enough to consider that they're looking at nothing. It's fair to invoke Occam's razor if you need an immediate hard conclusion but there's no reason for experts to not explore this and state what they're finding. The problem is when there are so many non-experts with limited information jumping to the conclusion that this must be nothing but a drum beat-up to war because of the conspiracy amongst warmongers for which there is also no proof. If it is due to some weapon, the operation would be designed to be unattributable. And if it could be attributed no one is going to tip their hand as to their capability of finding out. So we're unlikely to get solid proof for any of this and need to follow up on plausible explanations. I said that microwaves are a one, not saying other explanations aren't also. And I'm not rushing to conclusions.
asn0 6y ago
I also found this 'Open Letter to the Diplomats With "Havana Syndrome"' provided helpful context. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/201911/open-letter-the-diplomats-havana-syndrome https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/201911/...
- owenmarshall 6y ago
  Mass hysteria strikes me as even more plausible if you consider that some of the people reporting symptoms are American intelligence agents who could be participating in a disinformation campaign to give a pretext to act against Cuba.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    > a disinformation campaign to give a pretext to act against Cuba. That doesn't make sense, because the supposed culprits in the narrative are non-Cubans.
    - owenmarshall 6y ago
      Then we blame the Russians while tut tutting the Cubans for allowing this to happen. That’s the rather tidy thing about claiming to be attacked by a weapon no one can see and that leaves no evidence of use: you’re free to build theories that suit your geopolitical ambitions.
      - totalZero 6y ago
        A tut tut isn't the same thing as an "act against Cuba." If you believe that there are several diplomats with real injuries and persistent symptoms, then it stands to reason that something happened. No amount of FUD can controvert that. Personally I have no geopolitical ambitions. What I do have is a great deal of faith in the American investigative apparatus, and none whatsoever in the honesty of Russia and China.
totalZero 6y ago
I see three problems with your dismissal of the NAS finding: * Whatever skepticism you have toward NAS, I have a thousand times more skepticism toward a tweet thread from Sharon Weinberger. * Peer review is a BS credibility threshold that validates tons of garbage research in a way that financially benefits publications. The peer review process is not itself a form of research. The paper should be judged on its own merits and the credibility of its authors. * Contrary to what Weinberger said, a 64-page NAS document is available at https://www.nap.edu/read/25889/chapter/1 https://www.nap.edu/read/25889/chapter/1
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  The paper should be judged on its own merits Peer review is the process by which that judgment is made. Criticizing peer review is a little bit like criticizing democracy. It's the worst possible way to go about doing things, except for all of the others we've tried.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    > Peer review is the process by which that judgment is made. Not if you are yourself a scientist. Peer review is a social method of establishing the validity of research, but it's not the only method. Another would be collaboration between well-credentialed investigators. Yet another is having the backing of a large-scale professional firm or institution. Peer review is lauded by people who either (A) don't know anything about research, or (B) do research without stellar credentials or the imprimatur of a large institution. Its chief proponents are the publications and conferences themselves, whose entire business model depends upon a perception of the elevated status of peer review. Plenty of fictitious and fraudulent claims have been validated by peer review. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_stings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_s... If you want to review the research, read it yourself and evaluate the methodology.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Attempting to review the research of the NAS makes it obvious that their findings are way under the standard of evidence for such a claim. They also fail to give any kind of parameters for what this kind of RF would look like, as well as fail to make specific, falsifiable, claims on what it is. While plenty of bad claims have been validate by peer review, it doesn't mean that peer review doesn't massively reduce the number of outrageously incorrect claims. In any case, as it stands, the NAS article wouldn't pass peer review, because it makes borderline unphysical claims without providing enough evidence, even though doing so is quite easy. As for stellar credentials or the imprimatur of a large institution, one of the authors is fairly kooky and the institute itself has a massive conflict of interest. There's a reason even the State Department is distancing itself from this thesis.
skrebbel 6y ago
> a ton of hot air blown I see what you did there!
hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
BBC or random on twitter? Who to trust?

hedora 6y ago

The Russians definitely were working on this fifty years ago, and it produced symptoms consistent with many independent reports from US agents and people that suffered collateral damage. The twitter thread’s main objection seems to be that the US is not publishing plans describing the secret Russian weapon. In other news, the CIA was politically unable to do anything about these attacks for fear of angering Trump. Now that he’s on the way out, it’s not surprising they’re beginning to take action. It is sickening that the US government was unable to protect its own agents for the last four years because of interference from the White House.

fastball 6y ago
> It is sickening that the US government was unable to protect its own agents for the last four years because of interference from the White House. Citation needed.
boomboomsubban 6y ago
>The Russians definitely were working on this fifty years ago, and it produced symptoms consistent with many independent reports from US agents and people that suffered collateral damage The twitter thread mentions this. It involved a bombardment of microwave rays that was detected. How would a similar attack evade detection now? >The twitter thread’s main objection seems to be that the US is not publishing plans describing the secret Russian weapon. Even without publishing the plans, if you think a microwave weapon caused this event you should be able to explain how it would function. >Now that he’s on the way out, it’s not surprising they’re beginning to take action. Taking action is a report that took months to complete with no strong conclusion?
- totalZero 6y ago
  > The twitter thread mentions this. It involved a bombardment of microwave rays that was detected. How would a similar attack evade detection now? Sounds like something they could have worked on in the past half-century. Detection of a narrowly focused burst of radiation would be fairly challenging if you're outside of whatever volumetric detection zone is generated by the attack device. How would you differentiate it from other RF interference? > if you think a microwave weapon caused this event you should be able to explain how it would function. I don't see what exists to be gained by explaining the function of a weapon that jeopardizes and frightens your diplomats. If the claims are true, then there is nobody to convince here; the US is going to act internally on its own information, and the alleged foreign actors involved are going to spread their own disinformation accordingly.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    >I don't see what exists to be gained by explaining the function of a weapon that jeopardizes and frightens your diplomats. Why would that be more frightening than releasing a report saying they were probably attacked by an unknown microwave weapon? I think a radiation beam powerful enough to hurt people as described but able to avoid detection seems unlikely. Anything similar to interference is unlikely to cause damage.
  - janekm 6y ago
    Radio receivers (and the LNA component of such) are incredibly sensitive... that's what allows all the radio systems we use daily to work at all. If a signal is strong enough to have a physiological effect on the human body it is many many orders of magnitude stronger than can be measured with off-the-shelf instruments (i.e. an antenna and spectrum analyser). Even if you make an effort to concentrate the effect in a specific spot (e.g. phased array antennas), you can only achieve a moderate reduction (e.g. 1-2 orders of magnitude) outside the central lobe. It will be easily detectable outside the effective area.
simion314 6y ago
If this is such an old known weapon why are walls not insulated or some detectors placed in this buildings?
- ardy42 6y ago
  > If this is such an old known weapon why are walls not insulated or some detectors placed in this buildings? IIRC, most diplomats live in private residential areas, not in an embassy compound.
  - simion314 6y ago
    Aren't the important guys living inside the embassy? if not you would still protect their homes if this weapon would exist and US knows about it. If it exists for 50 years and somehow US is incapable to protect against it or prove it was used then what does this mean?
    - ardy42 6y ago
      Maybe ambassadors do, but it's not like they can run the show on their own. US embassies are pretty large operations with many different functions. IIRC, the people who think they were targeted by that weren't ambassadors, and at least some were involved in intelligence missions.
      - simion314 6y ago
        Still I expect US intelligence would know all the side effects of this weapon and not have to struggle identifying it, I expect they tested it 50 years ago already (same how they tested radiation effects, brain washing with drugs and all the other disturbing experiments they did)
        ardy42 6y ago
        > Still I expect US intelligence would know all the side effects of this weapon and not have to struggle identifying it, I expect they tested it 50 years ago already You seem to be assuming US intelligence is as scarily competent as it is in the movies. For instance even if they did test something similar 50 years ago, in the real world, all the people with that expertise would have retired long ago. To put it in perspective (with an imperfect analogy): 50 years ago, software engineers were writing code in COBOL and IBM 360 assembler, how quickly would a senior Java developer be able to parachute in and figure out and fix a subtle bug in an application written with those technologies?

cpncrunch 6y ago

It's really just all speculation, and doesn't fit the facts very well. If two people are in the same room and only one has symptoms, it is unlikely to be microwaves. Also, the brain imaging study just found differences in grey/white matter compared to controls, but that tends to vary quite a lot in the general population, and isn't evidence of brain damage. Overall, FND seems to be the most plausible explanation at the moment.

Sporktacular 6y ago
Microwaves can be highly directional, beams can be transmitted in much narrower than the width of rooms. It fits some facts fairly well, modulated microwaves could induce audible frequencies at various points of the head involved in audio perception. As mentioned elsewhere though, signals intelligence at diplomatic posts (see Stateroom and the SCS) would likely have detected at least lower frequency microwave energy. At higher frequencies it is less commonly used for communications and hence less likely to be monitored. Don't know why everyone is expecting solid proof here. There's a reasonable chance this would have been detected, but we're unlikely to know even if it was. Microwaves are still a plausible explanation.
- cpncrunch 6y ago
  >Don't know why everyone is expecting solid proof here Occam's razor. Doctors see these symptoms many times every day. For some reason, embassy staff are different from the rest of us humans, and we have to concoct some incredibly implausible reason for their symptoms.
  - Sporktacular 6y ago
    So the occurrence rate of brain abnormalities, dizziness, loss of balance, early onset Parkinson's, hearing loss and anxiety in the US embassy in Havana are all in line with those of the general public? or those among diplomats in other posts? Is this a fact, because I am not aware. "Doctors see these symptoms many times every day" Thats why it's called a syndrome - no one positive indicator. The possibilities of it being crickets or mass hysteria have been put forward before. The authors obviously decided these explanations didn't fit the clinical observations, and I suspect they're thorough enough to consider that they're looking at nothing. It's fair to invoke Occam's razor if you need an immediate hard conclusion but there's no reason for experts to not explore this and state what they're finding. The problem is when there are so many non-experts with limited information jumping to the conclusion that this must be nothing but a drum beat-up to war because of the conspiracy amongst warmongers for which there is also no proof. If it is due to some weapon, the operation would be designed to be unattributable. And if it could be attributed no one is going to tip their hand as to their capability of finding out. So we're unlikely to get solid proof for any of this and need to follow up on plausible explanations. I said that microwaves are a one, not saying other explanations aren't also. And I'm not rushing to conclusions.

asn0 6y ago

I also found this 'Open Letter to the Diplomats With "Havana Syndrome"' provided helpful context. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/201911/open-letter-the-diplomats-havana-syndrome https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/201911/...

owenmarshall 6y ago
Mass hysteria strikes me as even more plausible if you consider that some of the people reporting symptoms are American intelligence agents who could be participating in a disinformation campaign to give a pretext to act against Cuba.
- totalZero 6y ago
  > a disinformation campaign to give a pretext to act against Cuba. That doesn't make sense, because the supposed culprits in the narrative are non-Cubans.
  - owenmarshall 6y ago
    Then we blame the Russians while tut tutting the Cubans for allowing this to happen. That’s the rather tidy thing about claiming to be attacked by a weapon no one can see and that leaves no evidence of use: you’re free to build theories that suit your geopolitical ambitions.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      A tut tut isn't the same thing as an "act against Cuba." If you believe that there are several diplomats with real injuries and persistent symptoms, then it stands to reason that something happened. No amount of FUD can controvert that. Personally I have no geopolitical ambitions. What I do have is a great deal of faith in the American investigative apparatus, and none whatsoever in the honesty of Russia and China.

totalZero 6y ago

I see three problems with your dismissal of the NAS finding: * Whatever skepticism you have toward NAS, I have a thousand times more skepticism toward a tweet thread from Sharon Weinberger. * Peer review is a BS credibility threshold that validates tons of garbage research in a way that financially benefits publications. The peer review process is not itself a form of research. The paper should be judged on its own merits and the credibility of its authors. * Contrary to what Weinberger said, a 64-page NAS document is available at https://www.nap.edu/read/25889/chapter/1 https://www.nap.edu/read/25889/chapter/1

CamperBob2 6y ago
The paper should be judged on its own merits Peer review is the process by which that judgment is made. Criticizing peer review is a little bit like criticizing democracy. It's the worst possible way to go about doing things, except for all of the others we've tried.
- totalZero 6y ago
  > Peer review is the process by which that judgment is made. Not if you are yourself a scientist. Peer review is a social method of establishing the validity of research, but it's not the only method. Another would be collaboration between well-credentialed investigators. Yet another is having the backing of a large-scale professional firm or institution. Peer review is lauded by people who either (A) don't know anything about research, or (B) do research without stellar credentials or the imprimatur of a large institution. Its chief proponents are the publications and conferences themselves, whose entire business model depends upon a perception of the elevated status of peer review. Plenty of fictitious and fraudulent claims have been validated by peer review. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_stings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scholarly_publishing_s... If you want to review the research, read it yourself and evaluate the methodology.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Attempting to review the research of the NAS makes it obvious that their findings are way under the standard of evidence for such a claim. They also fail to give any kind of parameters for what this kind of RF would look like, as well as fail to make specific, falsifiable, claims on what it is. While plenty of bad claims have been validate by peer review, it doesn't mean that peer review doesn't massively reduce the number of outrageously incorrect claims. In any case, as it stands, the NAS article wouldn't pass peer review, because it makes borderline unphysical claims without providing enough evidence, even though doing so is quite easy. As for stellar credentials or the imprimatur of a large institution, one of the authors is fairly kooky and the institute itself has a massive conflict of interest. There's a reason even the State Department is distancing itself from this thesis.

skrebbel 6y ago

> a ton of hot air blown I see what you did there!

hobby-coder-guy 6y ago

BBC or random on twitter? Who to trust?