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At the core of "Havana Syndrome" lies the idea that Cuba and/or Russia have managed to develop energy weapons so advanced that the American military command won

At the core of "Havana Syndrome" lies the idea that Cuba and/or Russia have managed to develop energy weapons so advanced that the American military command won't even entertain the thought of them existing. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

MisterTea 7mo ago
This was the point I made in another comment here. My bet is the US deployed the weapon and accidentally sickened their own people. So of course they play stupid and deny that any such tech could exist. Though the Russians have been very clever in the past stumping the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
duped 7mo ago
There's also the chance it's not a weapon, but something that mistakenly turned into a weapon when it was tested on live subjects. I don't think randomly attacking embassy staff (iirc, not everyone was CIA - there were just desk people affected) makes sense for anyone to do, but trying to listen on them and fucking up sounds right up their (or our) alley.
Terr_ 7mo ago
> won't even entertain the thought of them existing Careful, it's also possible that they have thought very hard about such things, and they've decided that revealing what they know would lose them a technological edge. In other words, what if the CIA/DOD already knows there's a class of devices which could explain the problems, and the denial is about maintaining secrecy over their own operational capabilities? Imagine something similar in the 1980s: "This tragic mid-air collision was obviously caused by faulty radar or gross pilot error by at least one of the two military planes... Our brightest minds have looked very hard at the problem and there is no such thing as a 'stealth' airplane which doesn't show up on radar."
- fragmede 7mo ago
  Or going back further, Allies having cracked the Enigma encryption had to let Allied ships continue getting sunk and soldiers dying because to act otherwise would have revealed that the Enigma had been broken which would have led to an even greater loss of life.
everdrive 7mo ago
>At the core of "Havana Syndrome" lies the idea that Cuba and/or Russia have managed to develop energy weapons so advanced that the American military command won't even entertain the thought of them existing. I just don't think that's true at all. The answer could easily be that Cuba and Russia have developed energy weapons that we only know about from classified sources and therefore cannot discuss their existence.
- vintermann 7mo ago
  Sure, if you think the intelligence community is better at physics than the physics community.
  - stogot 7mo ago
    There is precedent for this. IC Satellite optics were years ahead of commercial. Same with cryptography. The NSA invented asymmetric encryption and kept it secret. I wouldn’t be surprised if they know a few advanced things about quantum computing that IBM hasn’t figured n out yet
    - vintermann 7mo ago
      I would, I've written about this before. A common error is to think that say NSA mathematicians have access to what's in the "free world", but those on the outside don't have access to the inside. The reason this is an error is because research is an interactive process. Spooks can read papers, but they can't freely discuss with outside researchers - not what they themselves are working on of course, but even talking to outsiders about what the outsiders are working on, can be risky, since it can accidentally reveal a lot. Secrecy cripples research. Even in areas where the TLAs hoover up the majority of graduates (was apparently true of math a while ago), they often fall behind. There was a time when the TLAs could just call people like Claude Shannon, demand he work for them and never tell anyone about what he was working on, and he would say OK. That time is long gone. They don't have that goodwill any longer, and the price of isolation for a researcher has only gotten worse as communication has improved.
  - 7mo ago
sailfast 7mo ago
The assumption with these weapons was that they would require too much energy to be portable enough to be undetectable in all of these circumstances (at least based on other reporting on the subject). If the device doesn't require a lot of power, then it's entirely possible that American military commanders and research leadership would miss it. Add to that an incentive to avoid helping the victims from a cost and overhead perspective, and you get a big ol' mess.
bitexploder 7mo ago
Or that we have them too…

MisterTea 7mo ago

This was the point I made in another comment here. My bet is the US deployed the weapon and accidentally sickened their own people. So of course they play stupid and deny that any such tech could exist. Though the Russians have been very clever in the past stumping the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

duped 7mo ago

There's also the chance it's not a weapon, but something that mistakenly turned into a weapon when it was tested on live subjects. I don't think randomly attacking embassy staff (iirc, not everyone was CIA - there were just desk people affected) makes sense for anyone to do, but trying to listen on them and fucking up sounds right up their (or our) alley.

Terr_ 7mo ago

> won't even entertain the thought of them existing Careful, it's also possible that they have thought very hard about such things, and they've decided that revealing what they know would lose them a technological edge. In other words, what if the CIA/DOD already knows there's a class of devices which could explain the problems, and the denial is about maintaining secrecy over their own operational capabilities? Imagine something similar in the 1980s: "This tragic mid-air collision was obviously caused by faulty radar or gross pilot error by at least one of the two military planes... Our brightest minds have looked very hard at the problem and there is no such thing as a 'stealth' airplane which doesn't show up on radar."

fragmede 7mo ago
Or going back further, Allies having cracked the Enigma encryption had to let Allied ships continue getting sunk and soldiers dying because to act otherwise would have revealed that the Enigma had been broken which would have led to an even greater loss of life.

everdrive 7mo ago

>At the core of "Havana Syndrome" lies the idea that Cuba and/or Russia have managed to develop energy weapons so advanced that the American military command won't even entertain the thought of them existing. I just don't think that's true at all. The answer could easily be that Cuba and Russia have developed energy weapons that we only know about from classified sources and therefore cannot discuss their existence.

vintermann 7mo ago
Sure, if you think the intelligence community is better at physics than the physics community.
- stogot 7mo ago
  There is precedent for this. IC Satellite optics were years ahead of commercial. Same with cryptography. The NSA invented asymmetric encryption and kept it secret. I wouldn’t be surprised if they know a few advanced things about quantum computing that IBM hasn’t figured n out yet
  - vintermann 7mo ago
    I would, I've written about this before. A common error is to think that say NSA mathematicians have access to what's in the "free world", but those on the outside don't have access to the inside. The reason this is an error is because research is an interactive process. Spooks can read papers, but they can't freely discuss with outside researchers - not what they themselves are working on of course, but even talking to outsiders about what the outsiders are working on, can be risky, since it can accidentally reveal a lot. Secrecy cripples research. Even in areas where the TLAs hoover up the majority of graduates (was apparently true of math a while ago), they often fall behind. There was a time when the TLAs could just call people like Claude Shannon, demand he work for them and never tell anyone about what he was working on, and he would say OK. That time is long gone. They don't have that goodwill any longer, and the price of isolation for a researcher has only gotten worse as communication has improved.
- 7mo ago

sailfast 7mo ago

The assumption with these weapons was that they would require too much energy to be portable enough to be undetectable in all of these circumstances (at least based on other reporting on the subject). If the device doesn't require a lot of power, then it's entirely possible that American military commanders and research leadership would miss it. Add to that an incentive to avoid helping the victims from a cost and overhead perspective, and you get a big ol' mess.

bitexploder 7mo ago

Or that we have them too…