Personally I had always assumed “directed energy weapons” was a cover story for investigations into whether Havana syndrome was a more conventional attack on US

Personally I had always assumed “directed energy weapons” was a cover story for investigations into whether Havana syndrome was a more conventional attack on US embassies. Imagine some hard-to-detect chemical that causes mild brain damage, I’m sure many exist. Is there a nefarious actor going around infiltrating catering services for US embassies and sneaking it into the food? Is there a nefarious actor going around infiltrating local water utilities and introducing it into the water supplies at US embassies? You can’t openly investigate that without diplomatic blowback and/or alerting the nefarious actor that you’re onto them, so let everyone believe you’re chasing evil microwave brain lasers or whatever. Same principle as UFOs being a cover story for investigations into whether other nations are using secret advanced flight techniques to fly spy planes over the country. A friend points out another, even more plausible investigation this could be a parallel construction for: the US embassies may have secretly deployed some kind of high-energy jamming measures at their embassies to protect against electronic snooping, and now they’re worried those measures have dangerous side effects. They can’t openly investigate this because it would reveal they have been experimenting on US government employees without consent, but if they are investigating “energy weapon attacks” they have a perfect excuse to walk around with antennas without raising suspicion. This article seems to indicate that the investigation actually was just a contagious and stupid idea that was earnestly and wastefully investigated. (Of course, in the cover story worlds, you publish this once you’ve successfully found and eliminated the problem…)