U.S. State Department reports new instance of American diplomats harmed in Cuba | Hacker News Reader

U.S. State Department reports new instance of American diplomats harmed in Cuba

washingtonpost.com

57 pointsdaegloe33 comments

I am more interested in knowing why it is happening. I find it hard to believe the Cuban government itself would want this.

All the initial reports seemed to focus on the diplomats, saying their spouses and family members were unharmed. If this was planted at the Cuban-supported housing as I've seen suggested, why weren't staff and family members affected?

Officials in Canada said in early August that they were “aware of unusual symptoms affecting Canadian and US diplomatic personnel and their families in Havana,” a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada told the AP. – https://qz.com/1062456/a-sonic-weapon-that-caused-diplomats-...

"CBS reported this week that the diplomats and their families had been diagnosed with nausea, headaches and balance disorders." – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/29/sixteen-american-...

A few questions I feel are pertinent:

1) Who has access to these technologies? Who manufactures them? How much are they?

2) Are they large devices or small?

3) When do symptoms onset after exposure?

4) Hearing loss is extremely traumatizing and debilitating. Why should we put civilian staff in harm's way?

4. Because the US is not a military dictatorship. US reps in other countries must remain civilians, not soldiers. No soldier speaks for the country on diplomatic matters. They protect such people, not do thier job when things get scary. That separation of duties is kind of a big deal.

I was actually implying that the civilian staff should be recalled home, not replaced with or changed to military.

Isn't the removal of diplomats essentially declaring war?

Not at all, but it does usually signal a degradation in the diplomatic relationship between two entities, so you often see it in the run-up to war.

Withdrawing or ejecting embassy staff has an impact on a governments ability to represent and assist individuals and businesses of your nation in a country, which is why ejection is a strong stick in the diplomacy game, but in Cuba, the historical situation would simply result in this being a return to a pre-Obama diplomatic situation.

Good questions; however I feel like the answers are going to be: "every major nation state, and their megacorps, and this stuff is pretty cost effective and easy to transport innocuously."

It might or might not be Cuba, rogue elements in Cuba, or organized crime unaffiliated with any nation state.

A more interesting line of questions for me:

    How are future attacks going to be detected?
    Is there a defense against them?
    How quickly will that kind of defense protect diplomats and government staff (not just US)?

> 4) Hearing loss is extremely traumatizing and debilitating. Why should we put civilian staff in harm's way?

Why not ask the people who did this why they're targeting civilians?

I do agree that that is an extremely pertinent question.

I imagine that it probably has to do with a general hate towards America. Whether misguided or not, these people chose an opportune and vulnerable target to send a message about how they view American policies.

I don't think generic hate would help you get ahold of sonic equipment. A plausible sounding theory I've heard (and I stress that it's total speculation) is that someone was trying to spy on the diplomats but miscalibrated their ultrasonic eavesdropping device, turning the effects harmful.

I've heard that theory a number of times. I'm no expert in acoustics or eavesdropping, but I would assume that ultrasonic eavesdropping equipment would involve highly sensitive microphones, not powerful speakers.

Is there some sort of ultrasonic-carrier-signal microphone out there, akin to laser mics?

Think of a bat. It clicks and the reverb is what its ears interpret to understand surroundings. Output can be used to trigger/power passive listening devices. I always think of the Russian gift to the US embassy that was a wooden seal with a passive bug in it. Scans didn't catch it for years.

That was activated by and transmitted radiowaves though.

Hmm... A speaker is a microphone. I am not sure if that is salient, but it seems worth noting.

How do we know these are diplomats, and not CIA agents under diplomatic cover? It's publicly known that the CIA maintains stations in diplomatic facilities (most other countries also send in spies under diplomatic cover too).

1) ebay if its ultrasounds like previously reported

Most embassy "diplomats" are spies or spy handlers.

That's interesting! I don't deny that there is some level of truth to that.

I passed the US State department exam and was offered a position in Mozambique. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no desire to work in Mozambique, and I have no idea if we have spies there.

The State Dept does say openly that they "analyze and influence the establishment of elections" in every country they operate in so... :)

While there are certainly intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover in every embassy, they're a small fraction of the total staff.

Would it be hard to believe that this was a weapons test by a country against its own citizens? That wouldn't surprise me in the least.

It would be bizarre for the US to test a weapon on its own diplomats in a foreign country, rather than finding some random people nobody would care about in the US itself.

Why not both?

MKUltra took place inside the United States and Canada.

...experiments included administering LSD to mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts and prostitutes—"people who could not fight back," as one agency officer put it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra#Experiments

That would depend on if you believe numerous Americans who claim to be victims of non-consensual human experimentation for less-than-lethal weapons including acoustic weapons... unpossible! https://www.google.com.tw/search?q=%22targeted+individuals%2... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

Why in the world did the US not put monitoring equipment in place after discovering the first incident months ago? I can't imagine a broadband SPL meter or microwave detector to be THAT expensive to protect the health of the diplomats who remained, or at least rule those out as possible causes. Did they think the attacks - or perhaps accidents - would not reoccur?

Did they know it was actually an attack months ago?

The US expelled Cuban diplomats in May, after the initial attacks. Granted, the attacks weren't made public, and a reason for the expulsion assigned, until August, so that could just be the administration trying to look proactive.

What is most disturbing about these incidents is that while they have been variously labeled "a sonic attack" or "potentially the by product of a surveillance system", nothing I have seen has proposed anything like a mechanism of injury let alone what type of device could surreptitiously visit this kind of insult on a human subject without any awareness on the subjects part that they are being exposed to some source of energy powerful enough to damage their ears and cause mild TBI.

An old surgeon friend used to talk about the kinematics of trauma, and how trauma was caused by excessive amounts of energy being taken on by a patient. Sometimes it's mechanical energy, it might be an exothermic reaction but in this instance the energy not detectable, as of yet by humans.

We'll be talking about this one for a while.

It may not have been a weapon. I can imagine some adversarial government testing some "listening" device that ends up not being well tested and potentially dangerous.

The first time, maybe it was just innocent espionage. But now that they continue to use it despite knowledge of the effects, I would consider it a weapon.

Really, espionage is a weapon of sorts, but crossing the realm to knowingly cause physical harm to diplomats is a threshold. The quiet war is getting less quiet.

Why would Cuban military or government do that on purpose?

What’s the motive? What do they win and what’s their end game?

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