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

211 points by samizdis 6y ago

Google234 6y 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 6y 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.
  - Google234 6y 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-Sound-Light-Temperature/dp/B07TCFX8Y2/ https://www.amazon.com/Electromagnetic-Radiation-5HZ-3500MHz...
    - tyingq 6y ago
      The descriptions of the attacks seem to indicate a pretty narrow beamwidth, so you'd probably have to wear it on a helmet :)
      - lolc 6y ago
        At intensities that would injure, you light up the whole neighbourhood with scattered radiation. There's no hiding this attack from a sensor in the vicinity.
        tyingq 6y ago
        The math would be interesting to see. I haven't seen a directed energy antenna, but you can easily drop 9db with single digit degrees off target with a big dish.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        9dB is really not a lot. If you're going to be sending 10kW+ of radiation 9dB of directionality still means you're gonna light up the whole neighborhood.
        jacquesm 6y ago
        In the most literal sense of the word. 1 KW at 100 meters on a directional antenna like that will happily light up neon tubes. The field is going to be a few hundred V/meter.
    - amelius 6y ago
      This kind of device seems marketed towards people who think EM waves in general are bad for them. It says it can't detect RF radiation while it clearly says 3.5Ghz in the description, so I think it might be a scam.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        Regardless of that, wideband EM receivers exist, and the US has some with incredibly high sensitivities.
- GVIrish 6y 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.
  - cheaprentalyeti 6y 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/encryption-would-not-have-helped-at-opm-says-dhs-official/ 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.
    - enkid 6y ago
      I agree that more should have been done, but the director of the OPM did resign, which is basically being fired in that kind of position. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/10/421783403/opm-director-archuleta-resigns-in-wake-of-data-breaches https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/10/421783403...
      - ianhawes 6y ago
        OPM Director is a political position with a defined end date. They serve for 1-4 years.
    - GVIrish 6y 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." I worked at State Department during the Obama era and into the Trump era. I am well aware that the Obama administration did not impose adequate consequences for prior acts of espionage and aggression such as the Cozy Bear hack on State Dept or Mikhail Lesin getting bludgeoned to death in DC. There also wasn't adequate pushback against propaganda efforts. The OPM hack is widely attributed to China and is probably the most devastating breach in recent memory. Who knows what the real world consequences of that have been thus far. Either way ny point is that right now, today, there is no excuse not to act. Unless maybe they still haven't figured out what is happening and who is responsible.
- 6510 6y 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.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  If they did, there is no reason we would be told or the results would be made public.
  - StanislavPetrov 6y ago
    Especially if and when they detected nothing and continued to claim they were being attacked by dastardly enemies.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- swiley 6y 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.
  - ta988 6y ago
    Something like that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNFc1dfU7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNFc1dfU7k
  - tscherno 6y 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 http://mikrowellenterror.de/english/index.htm
- Johnythree 6y 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..
ALittleLight 6y 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 6y 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.
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 6y 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?
    - realce 6y ago
      Low level staff today is the high level staff of 15 years from now, so you just make them dumb now.
      - infoseek12 6y ago
        Directly attacking the health of US personal would be a hugely provocative act. I’m not saying the Russians wouldn’t do it. There are reports that they paid out bounties in Afghanistan to attack US troops. But launching a campaign to enfeeble the intellect of future high level state department officials in this manner doesn’t make much sense. If you tried this kind of attack on a large scale and targeted a significant number of personnel, you would surely get caught which would lead to severe consequences. If you did it on a small scale that you might get away with, it would still be a risky and expensive undertaking and you’d only end up hurting a small fraction of one percent of possible future leaders. The cost benefit analysis doesn’t make sense to me. We obviously don’t have enough information to really know what’s going on here but I do thinking some possibilities that don’t make very much sense can be excluded.
cardanome 6y 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-the-health-diplomats-cuba/ 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.
- GVIrish 6y 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 6y ago
    It isn't real.
  - cardanome 6y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
leoc 6y 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-microwave-attacks 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-prepared-for-obstruction-in-russia-11391520 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-poisoned-investigating-litvinenko-murder 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 6y 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 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5jTbsvd3rA
bArray 6y 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 6y ago
  Yes, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon 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 6y 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?
    - bmicraft 6y ago
jchook 6y 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://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30676008/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509929/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509929/
- matthewdgreen 6y 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 6y 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)
    - ta988 6y ago
      That and you cover the signal of interest by flooding nearby frequency spectrum hoping nobody will notice the tiny blip.
LatteLazy 6y ago
People do love an unsolved mystery...
reedf1 6y ago
Can't you just get a spectrum analyser to detect things like this? Did technology like that not exist in this era?
- Johnythree 6y 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 6y 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.
- totalZero 6y 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.
tediousdemise 6y 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 6y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome
  - tediousdemise 6y 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.
    - jjcon 6y ago
      > So, we only began hearing reports when Trump was in office, allowing for a significant planning period. You are alleging a massive intergovernmental conspiracy, created up by Trump just so he can have some cover to strengthen restrictions on Cuba? No, the US doesn’t need a conspiracy to do that, they can just do it unilaterally. There are dozens of families that have been affected by these attacks, with varying levels of government experience, from multiple countries, investigated by multiple governments, independent panels, contractors and health professionals. It would take conspiracy on a massive scale to get everyone on the same page… all to do something that can be done without conspiracy and at the snap of a finger. That is hilariously ridiculous, not a single chance that is the case.
sneak 6y 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.
- tediousdemise 6y 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%20revenge https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Montezuma%27s%20r...
sneak 6y 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.
koreanguy 6y ago
Paranoia is the feeling that you're being threatened in some way, such as people watching you or acting against you, even though there's no proof that it's true. It happens to a lot of people at some point. Even when you know that your concerns aren't based in reality, they can be troubling if they happen too often
throwaway478543 6y 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-enqu%C3%AAte-1.5288609 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/havana-syndrome-neurotoxin-en...
avaldes 6y 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)
whereis 6y 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.
- tsimionescu 6y 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).
  - whereis 6y 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.
    - macinjosh 6y ago
      Throwing off other intelligence agencies. These people never deal in the truth that’s the whole game.
      - whereis 6y ago
        It's categorically false to say intel agencies (or the slight "these people") never deal in truth. That is not how misinfo/disinfo works. Additionally, intel agencies play an integral role in providing truthful and accurate products, for govt and industry partners.
        tsimionescu 6y ago
DubiousPusher 6y 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.
- andi999 6y ago
  Yes. Also if you look at the choice of words this citation only claims an attack, but not microwave attack.
- tediousdemise 6y 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.
tediousdemise 6y ago
The US has a long history of abuses and orchestrated false flag attacks on Cuba. See Operation Northwoods [0] and Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 [1]. Somewhat ironically, the US illegally transmits EM radiation to the island in the form of a propaganda-heavy radio station known as Radio Martí. [2] I ask you to please consider these historical events before deciding that Cuba has zapped people’s brains using targeted microwave beams. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_de_Aviación_Flight_455 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_de_Aviación_Flight_455 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_y_Televisión_Mart%C3%AD#Controversy_and_legality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_y_Televisión_Mart%C3%AD#...
- cm2187 6y ago
  That dates a bit. I find it hard to believe the embassy wouldn’t detect a microwave attack given that they probably monitor the whole spectrum.
  - giantrobot 6y ago
    Depending on the frequency radio waves can have extremely narrow beams. If an antenna is not literally in the path of the beam it can't detect it. Microwaves happen to be readily formed into tight beams. If an embassy had a monitoring system a microwave brain cooker beam might have just looked like a splash of static if it was detected at all. Multiple beams would likely be used so only their focal point (someone's head) would feel the full effect and so monitoring would be even less likely to detect such beams.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      You can have two of the following three. Small size (less than thirty meters), low scatter, and power. If you're going to have a powerful microwave brain frying system radiating over a 50m^2 area there is no way you're not going to light up the neighborhood in EM. Just can't happen, sorry.
koonsolo 6y 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?
- Johnythree 6y 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 6y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect
- grouphugs 6y ago
  painful and ineffective
grouphugs 6y ago
the nsa and cia are not victims in this story, neither are u.s diplomats. these are weapons that the nazis have touted for decades as their secret weapon. i've had weapons like this used on me a lot
dukeofdoom 6y ago
Arafat dying of cancer soon after not signing peace accord?
Giorgi 6y 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 6y 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.
  - Giorgi 6y ago
    I am not complaining, I am educating you on the facts. Don't act butthurt.

211 points by samizdis 6y 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 6y 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.
- Google234 6y 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-Sound-Light-Temperature/dp/B07TCFX8Y2/ https://www.amazon.com/Electromagnetic-Radiation-5HZ-3500MHz...
  - tyingq 6y ago
    The descriptions of the attacks seem to indicate a pretty narrow beamwidth, so you'd probably have to wear it on a helmet :)
    - lolc 6y ago
      At intensities that would injure, you light up the whole neighbourhood with scattered radiation. There's no hiding this attack from a sensor in the vicinity.
      - tyingq 6y ago
        The math would be interesting to see. I haven't seen a directed energy antenna, but you can easily drop 9db with single digit degrees off target with a big dish.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        9dB is really not a lot. If you're going to be sending 10kW+ of radiation 9dB of directionality still means you're gonna light up the whole neighborhood.
        jacquesm 6y ago
        In the most literal sense of the word. 1 KW at 100 meters on a directional antenna like that will happily light up neon tubes. The field is going to be a few hundred V/meter.
  - amelius 6y ago
    This kind of device seems marketed towards people who think EM waves in general are bad for them. It says it can't detect RF radiation while it clearly says 3.5Ghz in the description, so I think it might be a scam.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Regardless of that, wideband EM receivers exist, and the US has some with incredibly high sensitivities.
GVIrish 6y 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.
- cheaprentalyeti 6y 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/encryption-would-not-have-helped-at-opm-says-dhs-official/ 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.
  - enkid 6y ago
    I agree that more should have been done, but the director of the OPM did resign, which is basically being fired in that kind of position. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/10/421783403/opm-director-archuleta-resigns-in-wake-of-data-breaches https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/10/421783403...
    - ianhawes 6y ago
      OPM Director is a political position with a defined end date. They serve for 1-4 years.
  - GVIrish 6y 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." I worked at State Department during the Obama era and into the Trump era. I am well aware that the Obama administration did not impose adequate consequences for prior acts of espionage and aggression such as the Cozy Bear hack on State Dept or Mikhail Lesin getting bludgeoned to death in DC. There also wasn't adequate pushback against propaganda efforts. The OPM hack is widely attributed to China and is probably the most devastating breach in recent memory. Who knows what the real world consequences of that have been thus far. Either way ny point is that right now, today, there is no excuse not to act. Unless maybe they still haven't figured out what is happening and who is responsible.
6510 6y 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.
LatteLazy 6y ago
If they did, there is no reason we would be told or the results would be made public.
- StanislavPetrov 6y ago
  Especially if and when they detected nothing and continued to claim they were being attacked by dastardly enemies.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
swiley 6y 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.
- ta988 6y ago
  Something like that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNFc1dfU7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUNFc1dfU7k
- tscherno 6y 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 http://mikrowellenterror.de/english/index.htm
Johnythree 6y 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..

ALittleLight 6y 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 6y 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.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 6y 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?
  - realce 6y ago
    Low level staff today is the high level staff of 15 years from now, so you just make them dumb now.
    - infoseek12 6y ago
      Directly attacking the health of US personal would be a hugely provocative act. I’m not saying the Russians wouldn’t do it. There are reports that they paid out bounties in Afghanistan to attack US troops. But launching a campaign to enfeeble the intellect of future high level state department officials in this manner doesn’t make much sense. If you tried this kind of attack on a large scale and targeted a significant number of personnel, you would surely get caught which would lead to severe consequences. If you did it on a small scale that you might get away with, it would still be a risky and expensive undertaking and you’d only end up hurting a small fraction of one percent of possible future leaders. The cost benefit analysis doesn’t make sense to me. We obviously don’t have enough information to really know what’s going on here but I do thinking some possibilities that don’t make very much sense can be excluded.

cardanome 6y 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-the-health-diplomats-cuba/ 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.

GVIrish 6y 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 6y ago
  It isn't real.
- cardanome 6y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

leoc 6y 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-microwave-attacks 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-prepared-for-obstruction-in-russia-11391520 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-poisoned-investigating-litvinenko-murder 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 6y 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 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5jTbsvd3rA

bArray 6y 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 6y ago
Yes, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon 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 6y 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?
  - bmicraft 6y ago

jchook 6y 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://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30676008/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509929/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3509929/

matthewdgreen 6y 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 6y 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)
  - ta988 6y ago
    That and you cover the signal of interest by flooding nearby frequency spectrum hoping nobody will notice the tiny blip.

LatteLazy 6y ago

People do love an unsolved mystery...

reedf1 6y ago

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

Johnythree 6y 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 6y 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.

totalZero 6y 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.

tediousdemise 6y 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 6y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome
- tediousdemise 6y 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.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    > So, we only began hearing reports when Trump was in office, allowing for a significant planning period. You are alleging a massive intergovernmental conspiracy, created up by Trump just so he can have some cover to strengthen restrictions on Cuba? No, the US doesn’t need a conspiracy to do that, they can just do it unilaterally. There are dozens of families that have been affected by these attacks, with varying levels of government experience, from multiple countries, investigated by multiple governments, independent panels, contractors and health professionals. It would take conspiracy on a massive scale to get everyone on the same page… all to do something that can be done without conspiracy and at the snap of a finger. That is hilariously ridiculous, not a single chance that is the case.

sneak 6y 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.

tediousdemise 6y 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%20revenge https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Montezuma%27s%20r...

sneak 6y 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.

koreanguy 6y ago

Paranoia is the feeling that you're being threatened in some way, such as people watching you or acting against you, even though there's no proof that it's true. It happens to a lot of people at some point. Even when you know that your concerns aren't based in reality, they can be troubling if they happen too often

throwaway478543 6y 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-enqu%C3%AAte-1.5288609 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/havana-syndrome-neurotoxin-en...

avaldes 6y 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)

whereis 6y 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.

tsimionescu 6y 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).
- whereis 6y 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.
  - macinjosh 6y ago
    Throwing off other intelligence agencies. These people never deal in the truth that’s the whole game.
    - whereis 6y ago
      It's categorically false to say intel agencies (or the slight "these people") never deal in truth. That is not how misinfo/disinfo works. Additionally, intel agencies play an integral role in providing truthful and accurate products, for govt and industry partners.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago

DubiousPusher 6y 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.

andi999 6y ago
Yes. Also if you look at the choice of words this citation only claims an attack, but not microwave attack.
tediousdemise 6y 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.

tediousdemise 6y ago

The US has a long history of abuses and orchestrated false flag attacks on Cuba. See Operation Northwoods [0] and Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 [1]. Somewhat ironically, the US illegally transmits EM radiation to the island in the form of a propaganda-heavy radio station known as Radio Martí. [2] I ask you to please consider these historical events before deciding that Cuba has zapped people’s brains using targeted microwave beams. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_de_Aviación_Flight_455 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_de_Aviación_Flight_455 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_y_Televisión_Mart%C3%AD#Controversy_and_legality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_y_Televisión_Mart%C3%AD#...

cm2187 6y ago
That dates a bit. I find it hard to believe the embassy wouldn’t detect a microwave attack given that they probably monitor the whole spectrum.
- giantrobot 6y ago
  Depending on the frequency radio waves can have extremely narrow beams. If an antenna is not literally in the path of the beam it can't detect it. Microwaves happen to be readily formed into tight beams. If an embassy had a monitoring system a microwave brain cooker beam might have just looked like a splash of static if it was detected at all. Multiple beams would likely be used so only their focal point (someone's head) would feel the full effect and so monitoring would be even less likely to detect such beams.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    You can have two of the following three. Small size (less than thirty meters), low scatter, and power. If you're going to have a powerful microwave brain frying system radiating over a 50m^2 area there is no way you're not going to light up the neighborhood in EM. Just can't happen, sorry.

koonsolo 6y 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?

Johnythree 6y 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 6y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect

grouphugs 6y ago
painful and ineffective

grouphugs 6y ago

the nsa and cia are not victims in this story, neither are u.s diplomats. these are weapons that the nazis have touted for decades as their secret weapon. i've had weapons like this used on me a lot

dukeofdoom 6y ago

Arafat dying of cancer soon after not signing peace accord?

Giorgi 6y 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 6y 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.
- Giorgi 6y ago
  I am not complaining, I am educating you on the facts. Don't act butthurt.