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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 do

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.
      - quakeguy 6y ago
        The bounty story has been corrected, it was very thin to begin with. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-bidens-tale-of-russian-bounties-in-afghanistan-collapses-completely/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-bidens-tale-of-rus...
      - DubiousPusher 6y ago
        Yeah, especially without the support of the Soviet Union, it's very unlikely Cuba is interested in provoking the United States.
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      Probably a very low percentage of low level staff today will be high level staff 15 years forward - especially if you microwaving them. If that were the adversary's intention then I would expect hundreds or thousands of our staff to be suffering. As is, it looks like only a few people spread across decades. Malfunctioning of a microwave power source is the only thing that makes sense to me.
  - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
    I’ll take a shot. If it takes years of exposure, or is delayed, to be effective you want to aim for staffers before they are in key/important positions. Maybe staffers in embassy positions track well into higher, more important jobs?
    - freeflight 6y ago
      That would require more foreknowledge about career trajectories than even the US government itself has about its own people.
      - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
        The stereotype for government officials/workers is they stay in that industry. Sure you can’t target specific roles but you can generally weaken an organization or division through such “gray zone” tactics. Again, just trying to add to the discussion, most likely this is not correct.
- mc32 6y ago
  That doesn’t make sense. This isn’t baseball and you’re scouting for good prospects to sabotage. As someone else pointed out it might be a side effect to something else.
- XorNot 6y ago
  How widespread can this equipment be though that none has ever been recovered as a weapon of the enemy? If you have enough resources to start targeting low to mid level staff, then you have to have a lot of practical devices which are mobile. While it's plausible the US has in fact recovered a whole bunch of them and kept it secret...why? The microwave attack rumor is common which means everyone is looking into whether it can be done. Announcing you found the device and not showing pictures even - but instead nothing. No detectors either and as noted above detecting RF would be extremely cheap - deploy a couple of devices and you've got a direction finder telling you exactly where it's coming from. Havana syndrome could be a lot of things: the US is a big place, and decades ago food safety standards and additives were very different - MRE composition or catered food service would have had regional characteristics, but so would just random events happening randomly - on a long enough timescale you'd get a cluster of health issues from the people you sent through one part of the world but not another. Once you're into talking about multi-decadal outcomes this gets even fuzzier.
  - 13415 6y ago
    It could be extremely widespread if it is used by intelligence agencies, especially if the attacks are conducted by official embassy staff with diplomatic immunity abroad or by domestic intelligence operatives in the country. For example, I don't think CIA operatives could easily snatch a car full of FSB agents on the streets of Moscow, confiscate their equipment, and get away with it. The same for Havana. (If they had a way to detect the attacks, they might try, but the point is even then it wouldn't be easy. AFAIK, operatives generally do not attack each other directly on foreign soil.)
enkid 6y ago
It's possible it's a side effect of something else. Maybe they are using directed microwaves to power eavesdropping equipment, and the individuals in proximity to that equipment are getting sick.
- teachingassist 6y ago
  This makes it seem like friendly fire is a reasonable hypothesis - as some side-effect of physical security measures taken by the US government. Since the reported attacks generally happen within a radius of US locations requiring physical security - and apparently not in any other location. It's otherwise difficult to explain why the USA would be the singular target of these alleged attacks, for a period stretching across decades.
  - dasudasu 6y ago
    Canadian diplomats were also affected in the case of Havana. They have good relationships with Cuba, send a good flow of tourists, and have no sanctions in place.
  - rvba 6y ago
    Your post looks like disinformation. Something bad happens to US and Canadian diplomats in a foreign country, yet you find a way to blame USA.
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      No, it's that based on the scant material evidence here, almost any explanation is just as reasonable as, it's a secret Cuban ray weapon.
- ogurechny 6y ago
  Probably the most obvious explanation. I suppose that both attacking a diplomatic staff with a knife and just intentionally serving them contaminated food that puts them on the toilet for a couple of days would lead to some response. If something that can be easily identified with technical means produces no diplomatic response, then, despite the consequences, it's not considered an attack. Seems to be part of the job description. Most likely, they couldn't even ask politely, behind the curtains, to stop that because the answer would be “Sure, if you stop doing the same, too”. And none of that can be discussed openly because of the secrecy of spying technologies, so they have to invent stories about non-lethal weapons when the case could probably be described as “Major Ivanov, increase the power until we get a clear signal”. When you start paying attention to these stories, it becomes clear that these secrets are kept first and foremost from the general public of the native countries, mostly for both public image and non-accountability privilege. It makes no sense to deny something that has been known to secret services of every developed country otherwise. It's quite ironic that before Snowden, military insurgents trained by this or that superpower, and mafia bosses who hired ex-special-agents had a more clear picture on, say, phone surveillance than law-abiding citizens.
pydry 6y ago
>What's the point? Make Americans afraid to work in Russia and Cuba? Wouldn't you want to deter spies from a fairly terrifying hostile power? It's unclear if they did it (evidence seems thin) but the motive is definitely there, just as the motive for the Latin American "cancer gun" was definitely there: https://english.pravda.ru/world/120158-south_america/ https://english.pravda.ru/world/120158-south_america/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DubiousPusher 6y ago
Based on the evidence it's just as likely these are some kind of functional disorder as the product of an attack. Be careful about believing things just based on what intelligence agents report.

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.
    - quakeguy 6y ago
      The bounty story has been corrected, it was very thin to begin with. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-bidens-tale-of-russian-bounties-in-afghanistan-collapses-completely/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-bidens-tale-of-rus...
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      Yeah, especially without the support of the Soviet Union, it's very unlikely Cuba is interested in provoking the United States.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    Probably a very low percentage of low level staff today will be high level staff 15 years forward - especially if you microwaving them. If that were the adversary's intention then I would expect hundreds or thousands of our staff to be suffering. As is, it looks like only a few people spread across decades. Malfunctioning of a microwave power source is the only thing that makes sense to me.
- thoughtstheseus 6y ago
  I’ll take a shot. If it takes years of exposure, or is delayed, to be effective you want to aim for staffers before they are in key/important positions. Maybe staffers in embassy positions track well into higher, more important jobs?
  - freeflight 6y ago
    That would require more foreknowledge about career trajectories than even the US government itself has about its own people.
    - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
      The stereotype for government officials/workers is they stay in that industry. Sure you can’t target specific roles but you can generally weaken an organization or division through such “gray zone” tactics. Again, just trying to add to the discussion, most likely this is not correct.
mc32 6y ago
That doesn’t make sense. This isn’t baseball and you’re scouting for good prospects to sabotage. As someone else pointed out it might be a side effect to something else.
XorNot 6y ago
How widespread can this equipment be though that none has ever been recovered as a weapon of the enemy? If you have enough resources to start targeting low to mid level staff, then you have to have a lot of practical devices which are mobile. While it's plausible the US has in fact recovered a whole bunch of them and kept it secret...why? The microwave attack rumor is common which means everyone is looking into whether it can be done. Announcing you found the device and not showing pictures even - but instead nothing. No detectors either and as noted above detecting RF would be extremely cheap - deploy a couple of devices and you've got a direction finder telling you exactly where it's coming from. Havana syndrome could be a lot of things: the US is a big place, and decades ago food safety standards and additives were very different - MRE composition or catered food service would have had regional characteristics, but so would just random events happening randomly - on a long enough timescale you'd get a cluster of health issues from the people you sent through one part of the world but not another. Once you're into talking about multi-decadal outcomes this gets even fuzzier.
- 13415 6y ago
  It could be extremely widespread if it is used by intelligence agencies, especially if the attacks are conducted by official embassy staff with diplomatic immunity abroad or by domestic intelligence operatives in the country. For example, I don't think CIA operatives could easily snatch a car full of FSB agents on the streets of Moscow, confiscate their equipment, and get away with it. The same for Havana. (If they had a way to detect the attacks, they might try, but the point is even then it wouldn't be easy. AFAIK, operatives generally do not attack each other directly on foreign soil.)

enkid 6y ago

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

teachingassist 6y ago
This makes it seem like friendly fire is a reasonable hypothesis - as some side-effect of physical security measures taken by the US government. Since the reported attacks generally happen within a radius of US locations requiring physical security - and apparently not in any other location. It's otherwise difficult to explain why the USA would be the singular target of these alleged attacks, for a period stretching across decades.
- dasudasu 6y ago
  Canadian diplomats were also affected in the case of Havana. They have good relationships with Cuba, send a good flow of tourists, and have no sanctions in place.
- rvba 6y ago
  Your post looks like disinformation. Something bad happens to US and Canadian diplomats in a foreign country, yet you find a way to blame USA.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    No, it's that based on the scant material evidence here, almost any explanation is just as reasonable as, it's a secret Cuban ray weapon.
ogurechny 6y ago
Probably the most obvious explanation. I suppose that both attacking a diplomatic staff with a knife and just intentionally serving them contaminated food that puts them on the toilet for a couple of days would lead to some response. If something that can be easily identified with technical means produces no diplomatic response, then, despite the consequences, it's not considered an attack. Seems to be part of the job description. Most likely, they couldn't even ask politely, behind the curtains, to stop that because the answer would be “Sure, if you stop doing the same, too”. And none of that can be discussed openly because of the secrecy of spying technologies, so they have to invent stories about non-lethal weapons when the case could probably be described as “Major Ivanov, increase the power until we get a clear signal”. When you start paying attention to these stories, it becomes clear that these secrets are kept first and foremost from the general public of the native countries, mostly for both public image and non-accountability privilege. It makes no sense to deny something that has been known to secret services of every developed country otherwise. It's quite ironic that before Snowden, military insurgents trained by this or that superpower, and mafia bosses who hired ex-special-agents had a more clear picture on, say, phone surveillance than law-abiding citizens.

pydry 6y ago

>What's the point? Make Americans afraid to work in Russia and Cuba? Wouldn't you want to deter spies from a fairly terrifying hostile power? It's unclear if they did it (evidence seems thin) but the motive is definitely there, just as the motive for the Latin American "cancer gun" was definitely there: https://english.pravda.ru/world/120158-south_america/ https://english.pravda.ru/world/120158-south_america/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

DubiousPusher 6y ago

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