Mystery of sonic weapon attacks in Cuba deepens | Hacker News Reader

Mystery of sonic weapon attacks in Cuba deepens

theguardian.com

523 pointsnikcub277 comments

https://www.justsecurity.org/44289/sonic-attacks-diplomats-c...

Great link. This is just incredible:

> However, the substance was at least a step up from earlier Russian tracking devices like radioactive nails hammered into the tires of U.S. diplomatic vehicles, allowing Russian surveillance vehicles to hang back unseen and follow along by using special equipment to track targets’ tire residue.

The method of identifying moles is ingenious too.

What is it about Russia that makes them so partial to espionage as a preferred method? From the Cold War to today's cyberattacks, they manage to use intelligence gathering and espionage as a method of maintaining disproportionate world power. Is it cultural? If so where does it come from, and when did it start?

America has great intelligence capabilities as well, but in general you tend to think of it as more of a "brute force", or "diplomacy" type of nation, while Russia's strategies tend to be more asymmetric.

> Is it cultural?

It's cheap. You need a few people and clever ideas rather than enormous capital. Russia has people and education.

It is partially cultural too, Stalin started it, he though knowledge was most important resource and he was right too.

The tradition of Russian espionage predates Stalin and, in fact, predates the USSR altogether.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana

During the Cold War, the USSR stepped up the size and sophistication of its covert operations and intel apparatus dramatically. But the Russians have always believed in espionage as an effective, asymmetrical advantage.

what country hasn't, ever?

There's a difference between theory and praxis that we need to consider here. Most countries "believe" in espionage; the Russians have always invested in it as a sort of national discipline. Russia 'specializes' in spycraft, you might say.

I would still put this into the cultural camp. But I tend to see culture as a reflection of many factors including social, genetics, generational (which includes technological which is itself influenced by the overall culture), evolutionary aspects, and competition factors (which positively influence evolutionary and social aspects vs -say- a dormant passive society), not just social factors which culture is typically view as a product of.

Maybe they read The Art of War and actually took it seriously? The entire final chapter is about espionage.

And chapter III:

> It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles;

Or is it? If the operations are truly intended to be espionage and thus covert of course you won't hear it in the mass media, which would only tend to report busted enemy operations. CIA has massive operations everywhere. Basing everything you think on the mass media would not be smart to say the least.

Great read, gives a logical theory and really puts things into perspective.

While government sponsored surveillance is still going strong, the cold war was crazy. Imagine for a moment if the internet (correction: the web) was invented and became popular during a cold war era. that would be fun

The predecessor of the internet (ARPANet) was invented during the cold war, I wouldn't doubt if there were attempts to use it by both the US and Russia. Also I'd argue that the cold war is still very much active on the internet, "russian hackers" is a common subject in the news. Whether that's really Russian hackers or just playing the blame game is up for debate of course. Blaming things on the Russians was another common thing during the cold war.

Whether that's really Russian hackers or just playing the blame game is up for debate of course.

If you are implying there's any doubt about Russian involvement in hacking aimed at the US election, there really isn't any credible doubt about that.

No one argued that ATP-28 and ATP-29 weren't Russian when they hacked the IOC and drug testing labs right after the Russian athletes were banned from the Olympic games.

Nor back in 2014[1] when the FireEye assessment was first done.

Nor in 2015, when they hacked the White House[2]

Nor during 2016, prior to the election when they were identified[3]

It's only after the election that people suddenly don't want to believe it.

[1] https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a...

[2] http://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-to-putin-stop-hacking-me

[3] https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...

How can you be sure?

> How can you be sure?

Don't go down this route. This leads to things like questioning if we can really be 100% super double sure that we landed on the moon, seeing as none of us have any verifiable proof.

Russians were involved in a lot of hacking during the election, and a lot that has surfaced since, like intrusion into power plants, etc.

How do we know this? Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it. Do we have to trust them every time they say they're not spying on us? Or whether they have any active investigations on something? No. But there is no national security or stability reason for them to lie about this. Quite the opposite.

That GP is being downvoted for stating this is disconcerting.

> Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it.

You may want to verify this.

I already have [1]. Are you mistaken or referring to something else?

[1] https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

All of their reports on all of their investigations into Russian hacking is not included on the declassified document.

Did they investigate voting machine hacking? It's not included in this report.

You're moving goalposts.

The claim you refuted was whether Russians were involved, which they were. Regardless of the amount of classified documents, any new information wouldn't contradict the current public reports of Russian involvement in X. Whether they had involvement in Y is secondary.

Goalposts:

> Blaming things on the Russians was another common thing during the cold war.

I've lost the thread. Are you saying that the major intelligence agencies are merely blaming Russia without basis?

> merely blaming Russia

High confidence, about very specific things. Not all the things, i.e. the goalposts.

> High confidence, about very specific things. Not all the things, i.e. the goalposts.

I'm not being mean, but honestly have a hard time understanding you. Can you explain what you mean in full sentences?

You have to forgive him. Shilling Kremlin talking points in a second language is not as easy as it looks.

Are you this good at sniffing out an immigrant in person as well?

Please don't respond to a bad comment (like a personal attack) by adding one of your own. That also breaks the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and does no one any good.

This breaks the HN guidelines egregiously and will get you banned if you do it here, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The higher poster was talking about a much larger swathe of accusation of Russia than you were.

Your cited document covers a small amount of investigation not really answering his/her objections to labeling everything a Russian hack.

Nothing more to see here.

It's not as certain as the moon landings.

I agree Russia is almost certainly responsible. There is a ton of publicly available circumstantial evidence that points to them.

But without libpcap dumps showing what really went down, we can only take the word of various conflicted people.

It's totally possible the NSA had the hackers bugged, and even saw the order come in from their Russian handler, but we haven't seen anything like this ourselves.

You can download the malware samples and do forensics yourself.

http://contagiodump.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/russian-apt-apt2... has the ATP28 samples (do verify the hashes though!)

https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/global/en/cu... has the techniques they used to identify developers. I agree it is circumstantial, but it's pretty strong and systemic.

I personally find this more compelling than a pcap which would just show the last jump.

I'm referring to dumps of the hackers themselves, detailing their chat logs, emails, bitcoin transactions, ssh traffic, etc. Not just the exploit-based traffic.

If I ran the NSA, I'd have every hacker group I could find under total surveillance.

I have video of the moon landings and the testimony of thousands of people that were physically involved.

> I'm referring to dumps of the hackers themselves, detailing their chat logs, emails, bitcoin transactions, ssh traffic, etc. Not just the exploit-based traffic.

Do you think this is how the NSA operates? They have that big ol' office building so they can email each other incriminating evidence, pay themselves with bitcoin, and ssh into rooted boxes from government facilities?

This is state-sponsored warfare, not script kiddies or hacker gangs.

It sounds like you're confused...I'm saying the NSA may have chat logs of the hacking group itself.

These "hacking groups" range from script kiddies that can barely phish, to world class programmers working with billions in resources.

Regardless of who did it, it's entirely possible that the NSA has damning evidence of what went down.

No, I think you're confused. I pointed out that:

* NSA is a top-tier state-sponsored actor.

* NSA doesn't leave chat logs, bitcoin transactions, or email logs lying around to be hacked.

* Another top-tier state-sponsored actor would act the same way (no chat logs).

* If a foreign state was behind those attacks, the NSA would not be able to find chat logs (because they don't exist).

* Therefore, your acceptance that the Kremlin was behind the attacks cannot depend on the NSA releasing that kind of evidence.

It's paradoxical. The evidence wouldn't exist if that fact held true. Honestly, I would be more suspicious if the NSA released the kind of evidence you were asking for.

Not to say it's true or false either. These are spy games, there's never 100% confidence...

My case as already been said better by others:

"In the physical world of crime investigation, common sense dictates that the perpetrator of a crime may use any weapon and not just one made in the country of his birth, and that the developer or manufacturer of the weapon most likely isn’t the criminal.

And yet, those seemingly crazy assumptions are made every day by cybersecurity companies involved in incident response and threat intelligence.

The malware was written in Russian? It was a Russian who attacked you.

Chinese characters in the code? You’ve been hacked by the Peoples Liberation Army."

https://medium.com/@jeffreycarr/the-dnc-breach-and-the-hijac...

"The person or persons responsible are unknown, but let’s assume that CrowdStrike is correct and the responsible party are Russian hackers employed by one or more of Russia’s intelligence services. They used APT28 malware developed and maintained by a Russian lab."

Another out-of-context quote from the same article...this is fun ;-)

No informed person is claiming Russia did it merely because it was "written in Russian". They're all basing it on many pieces of circumstantial evidence.

Don't crime investigators also look at the criminal history, motivations, and opportunity of the suspect?

I'd say you're doing a disservice to that author by taking his quote out of context. He's very clearly not making the simplistic straw man argument that you are.

It sounds like he suspects the Russians did it, as is rational, but wants real proof -- and not just circumstantial evidence. That is a totally reasonable demand.

>It sounds like he suspects the Russians did it, as is rational, but wants real proof -- and not just circumstantial evidence. That is a totally reasonable demand.

That is all I ask as well. Considering we are accusing a nation with nuclear weapons of an act of war the evidence must be much more than circumstantial. The FBI wasn't even permitted to investigate the server personally yet, let's start there instead of relying on private contractors paid by the DNC.

> of an act of war the evidence must be much more than circumstantial

When does "circumstantial" end? When there are "little green men" in Tallinn? How about Alaska?

>When does "circumstantial" end?

Why not just wire up the nuclear missile system to all government servers and launch should a Russian IP address be detected?

The idea that we can choose to ignore an attack on our sovereignty by a third-rate pariah state is beyond absurd.

The US is the super power here, not the other way around. We set the terms.

So war over a couple emails? I'd rather not servicemen die to retain the illusion that the DNC isn't corrupt.

The hacks didn't even reveal that.

They did, however, release personal information on donors as well as the dirt from American heros personal emails (Colin Powell and John McCain) who just happen to be anti-Putin.

Then how did they "hack the election" if the content was so benign?

Because our enemies even attempting to influence the election should be outrageous to a patriot.

The same enemies the Clinton sold all that uranium to? This narrative is falling apart.

You understand that you can't sell something you don't own, right?

HN has a max depth but here is a fantastic rebuttal to the absurd Uranium One allegations:

http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-uranium-russia-deal/

I'll take the New York Times over an organization who's founder embezzled money to pay for escort services.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clin...

The snopes article directly cites the NYTimes article. The entire ordeal is totally blown out of proportion (read: intentionally misread by the same people that think the DNC emails were damning), given Hillary had barely anything to do with it.

Payments made to Clinton tied organizations by Russian banks who profited off of a uranium deal days after the ink had dried = Nothing to see here

Cyrillic characters in a binary = Definitive evidence

Secret meetings with Kremlin-linked individuals days before the DNC hacks were first released and lying about why they were set up - nothing to see here.

Emails talking about collaboration with Russian government during the campaign to obtain damning information about Hillary Clinton released by his own son - nothing to see here.

Firing the director of the FBI "because of the Russia investigation" according to the man himself - nothing to see here.

Repeatedly downplaying the influence of Russia in Ukraine and changing the GOP platform after hiring a pro-Russian political operative to be his campaign manager - nothing to see here.

Repeatedly disagreeing with the evidence provided by American intelligence agencies and dozens of cybersecurity firms while agreeing with the statements of Russian intelligence after being president - nothing to see here.

Having a national security advisor who sat at the same table as Vladimir Putin in December 2015 during a gala for the state propaganda network - nothing to see here.

Having the same national security advisor lie about meeting the Russian ambassador - nothing to see here.

Having a campaign operative in Roger Stone (who he still in contact with) openly allege that he has a backchannel with Julian Assange - nothing to see here.

Peter Smith coordinating with Russian hacker groups, only to kill himself a few weeks after telling the WSJ? Nothing to see here!

....but a highly regarded charity founded by one of the most popular presidents in recent history raising money...now, that's a scandal!

I'll be honest, if our enemies are this afraid of someone, I want that person on my side.

> The malware was written in Russian? It was a Russian who attacked you.

You don't think that investigators can deal with misleading evidence? The country of origin is still a clue that can fit together with other clues.

I'd like to see what the FBI can learn if given access to the server, currently they have not been permitted access and all reports have come from third parties paid by the DNC. Similar third party accounts not funded by the DNC make claims that directly contradict the narrative portrayed by those who have been funded by them: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-10/new-research-shows-...

The problem with 'how can you be sure' is that it is usually an attempt to cut off discussion and investigation, by implying that only irrefutable facts are admissible.

"by implying that only irrefutable facts are admissible"

lol.

I prefer living wage, non-gmo tautology free facts.

I'm not trying to cut off discussion. I was asking a genuine question because while it's entirely plausible the Russians did attempt to influence American politics a number of other scenarios are also entirely plausible. Are we just taking what the intelligence community say at face value now without seeing actual proof? That seems far more dangerous than whatever you're worried about. It's not like the US intelligence community have a flawless record when it comes to this type of activity either.

Sorry, you are right - statements like the one mentioned by rdtsc are fair game.

Or it's an attempt to find out and learn more.

If the claims is really something as serious as "Russians overturned the result of the election" it should come with very clear evidence. Otherwise it is conspiracy theory. Granted it is a good one and a great PR campaign. But I think it has run its course by and it's time to switch to something else.

I also heard about "17 intelligence agencies agreeing on the fact". Maybe 25th Air Force (one of the agencies) can tell us more about what they have found there.

> overturned the result of the election

The public IC statements very specifically noted that impact of RU efforts was not assessed, only the actions themselves.

You seem a bit stuck on this thing about there being 17 agencies.

It was a DNI statement on behalf of the 17 agencies of the intelligence community. That means none objected to it. For the purposes of that statement the most important were the NSA, the CIA and the FBI. The FBI took longer to sign off than the others because they weren't initially convinced about the part that says the aim was to get Trump elected. They didn't have any problems with the part about Russian meddling in the election though. Apparently they got some additional Intel because they signed in the end.

This is way those three agencies have this logo on the statement, along with the DNI, but the coastguard didn't.

The evidence pointing to Russia involvement in hacking the United States election is way more certain than the lack of evidence for an alternative scenario the drive-by downvoters are giving. :)

It's not like the United States or other countries have never been involved in similar hacking shenanigans. I mean, for instance: there is some interesting circumstantial evidence tying Stuxnet to United States and/or Israel intelligence agencies. "Officially", there is no proof tying Stuxnet to anything, that has been de-classified for now at least. But several intelligence intelligence agencies in Europe and the Middle East have concluded that Stuxnet is a US / Israel product.

Likewise, there is a lot of interesting circumstantial evidence typing Russia to the election hacking. Again, nothing 100% "certain" that is de-classified. But a lot of intelligence agencies have reached this conclusion. Added to this, I haven't seen any good counter-explanations.

Beyond mere intelligence agencies reaching this conclusion, there has been a lot of US government action related to this issue (in that Russian diplomats were expelled and sanctions were applied in part due to the election hacking). If all of that was for some illusion or show, that frankly would be strange to me.

"You never know", of course. But the probability of Russians being involved in the hacking seems very high.

Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it.

We don't need to trust US agencies who claim "it was them but we can't tell you why"

There's a lot of evidence which came out before and during the attacks from non-government sources which points to the culprits.

I've posted this before, but I think it's important people understand what public evidence is available:

The 2014 report into ATP-28: https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a... presenting pretty compelling (if circumstantial) evidence that group is Russian state backed.

(July) 2016 report into the DNC hacking, showing it was first breached by ATP-29 (The other Russian state backed hacking group), but the leaks almost certainly came from a second breach by ATP-28 later: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...

Note the dates here. 2014 is way before anyone could claim some kind of anti-Trump deep state conspiracy. There's the Olympic hacks (which clearly benefited Russian interests) by the same group too.

Ironically, even Putin's comments on the matter are more credible: "Hackers are free people, just like artists who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting," he said. "The hackers are the same. They would wake up, read about something going on in interstate relations and if they feel patriotic, they may try to contribute to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia."[1]

That GP is being downvoted for stating this is disconcerting.

Thanks, but I'm not surprised. Feel free to correct it ;)

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/putin-says-russia-doesnt-hack-o...

GCHQ also flagged it in 2015:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spie...

> GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Yeah, but I'm trying to only link to coverage dated before the election.

There's lots of additional evidence, but it's harder to argue with datestamps.

>No. But there is no national security or stability reason for them to lie about this

They don't have to be lying, they could just be mistaken. Is it not common for hackers to leave fake tracks pointing to someone else as a diversion?

sure, but Putin basically admitted Russia did it

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-put...

Regarding the trustworthiness of 'three letter agencies', two of them (DoD, JCS) approved plans for another (CIA) to commit terrorism against American civilians in order to justify a war against Cuba [1].

They could ultimately have America's best interests at heart, however you can be certain that their public statements have no standard of truth and are made to serve a covert agenda.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

One operation from over 50 years ago is your example? Back then the spooks were doing far worse, conducting operations against domestic civil rights groups.

That's a little different than a public DNI statement on behalf of 17 different agencies pointing to Russian attacks, corroborated by multiple other nations, in an era of wide-spread whistleblowing that would uncover a large-scale conspiracy.

Occam's Razor says all signs point to Russia.

I agree Russia is the most likely perpetrator, but it's all circumstantial from the evidence I've seen, and there's clearly a large sociopolitical impact from this hack.. hence it's substantial enough to be framed for some purpose.

I'm merely pointing out that we should question it when the U.S. government says "They did this!", as they've clearly tried to lie about it before in dire circumstances.

I wish I had more recent examples to give you, or examples that were actually executed on, however I think that'd be rather dangerous and impossible to obtain.

> One operation from over 50 years ago is your example? Back then the spooks were doing far worse, conducting operations against domestic civil rights groups.

Or torturing Americans civilians for eh... testing whether interrogation techniques would work on the real enemy(tm) as well.

> Russians were involved in a lot of hacking during the election, and a lot that has surfaced since, like intrusion into power plants, etc.

Any large enough country is involved in such activities. Iranians, Chinese, Israelis and North Koreans, Romanians, US false flags, private interests are probably able to hire people to work for them.

> 100% super double sure that we landed on the moon

Clearly you have just as good evidence that Russians hacked the election and overturned the result that is comparable to moon landing. A video perhaps, an audio recording, a chat log that can be verified, a confession from a credible source or a defector?

I hoping the vote recount would show some proof in Wisconsin but it turned out it gave Trump 3 more votes.

Yeah, serious allegation require more serious evidence to be believed. Otherwise it looks like a conspiracy theory.

And just like a conspiracy theory, if more people repeat it doesn't make it more true. If there are 10k contrails or lizard people making the same argument, it doesn't make the argument more true.

> How do we know this? Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it.

The 17 intelligence agencies, including the Coast Guard Intelligence has irrefutable proof Russia overturned our election results?

The reason that the word of all 3 letter agencies is a gold standard for proof (just as good as the proof we have that we landed on the moon) is because they never lied to us before, or tried to do anything shady. /s

Just kidding. What should I cite? Everything awful the FBI did to MLK? That the NSA lied to us about domestic spying? The fact that Iraq was actually trying to disarm while the Bush admin and 3 letter agencies engaged in a cover up so as to not disrupt their plans in the ME?[1]

In fact, I'd like to know why I should trust 3 letter agencies because their accountability to the public right now seems to be nonexistent.

1 - https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-up...

"The 17 intelligence agencies, including the Coast Guard Intelligence has irrefutable proof Russia overturned our election results?"

how is this relevant to anything? russia can have many aims in hacking during the election, besides actually overturning the election results. I am always amused by this zero or 1 logic.

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

Those that claim all 17 agencies had evidence when that is absurd (did Geospacial have evidence?) — making such a claim gives reason to doubt all the claims. I think was the point being made.

so the US propaganda machine has partially achieved its goal even on HN where people are expected (if I am not mistaken) not to take anything at face value.

More to the point, there were no credible investigations, "intrusion into power plants" was fake news, the FBI even hasn't up to this day examined the "hacked" DNC server.

Stop wondering whether or not Russia did it.

Putin admitted as much https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-put...

> How can you be sure?

Don't go down this route.

Which "route"? The "asking questions" route?

You know that "only asking" is a well known trolling technique, right?

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

You may be right - that post does come off trolly-y, in retrospect.

You don't have to be. What's your point?

Hacking did take place in the Cold war. See The Cuckoo's Egg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg

Some blamed the NASA hack (this day 30 years ago) on the Russians at first.

(And that actually wasn't off by much, see the KGB hacks).

We’re basically living in a new Cold War. The threat of superpower nuclear catastrophe has never been higher, and that’s no hysteria, but the assessment of sober respected analysts.

You'd probably enjoy The Cuckoo's Egg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg

The cold war was crazy.

It's still going on, just under different guises.

> A less high-tech component of the attack reportedly included using a dwarf to scale inside the embassy wall and emplace listening devices.

Amazing

This sounds more like a scene from Agent007 movie than real world events. I'm interested what techniques are used today, as we have so many advanced technological means..

What was that movie where the guy was given a remote controlled electronic beetle he flew into the house via a cell phone controller in order to ID a terrorist for the drone bombing?

Eye in the Sky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film)

The human element will always beat technology, cheaper simpler and more effective. It's far simpler to just sent in some dude, who pretends to be a common burglar should get caught, instead of building super fancy nano-drones which could fail/crash, then serve as evidence and would be studied for their technology.

It's the same reason why social engineering is one of the most common attack vectors for high-profile breaches, some persuasiveness can go a long way.

That might work for stuff like industrial espionage, but when it comes down to embassies and diplomats, where there is awareness of social engineering, this is not that obvious.

And when someone would break into an embassy, nobody is going to believe he's just a common burglar.

> The Russian security services were also known to flood the U.S. embassy in Moscow with electromagnetic radiation. They would beam concentrated microwaves and electronic pulses at the Embassy in an attempt to eavesdrop on U.S. typewriters and conversations. In the 1970s, a U.S. Ambassador contracted and died of a blood disease that many assumed to be a result of the attacks.

This goes both ways.

From what I remember there was _exactly_ the same case reported of the US security services blasting Soviet embassy in Washington with EM radiation, which led to several cases of blood cancer in personnel, all of which were ultimately lethal.

But microwaves are non-ionizing and do not cause damage to the DNA to cause a cancer to develop.

No idea, mate.

I read this more than 20 years ago, so the "EM" part might be off, but the article revolved around the fact that there was an abnormally high number of former Washington embassy employees from certain time period that died of blood cancer. The cause was stated to be some kind of external irradiation.

Certainly there could be other pathways to cancer. We know there are lots of things that contribute to cancer other than ionizing radiation.

For example, improperly functioning immune system can lead to cancer. It could be there is a pathway using EM not well understood.

Keep in mind that Sipher's post, while interesting for the historical context, significantly pre-dates (by about 3 weeks) the AP findings, which bring significant new details into the picture (about both the severity of the symptoms, and what exactly people experienced in their hotel rooms).

So while we still don't know exactly what happened, the plot does seem to be thickening.

> While I have not served in Cuba, my experience in a number of similar hostile, high counterintelligence threat countries suggests that this is more likely a surveillance effort gone wrong, than the use of an offensive sonic weapon.

Considering it happened in a hotel room in a targeted fashion I believe this is the most obvious answer.

The story about the extreme lengths Russian's put into tapping the Moscow embassy is a classic:

> Even the sidewalks and streets throughout the neighborhood were embedded with electronic collection gear which was designed to turn the embassy building into a giant antenna.

As they note it also seems like an odd time for Cuba (if it is them) to choose to deploy a weapon with such obvious negative results. They're not getting anything out of this obviously and if you wanted to harm diplomats in a novel way... you'd probabbly save that for a better time and not expose it now.

There is psych warfare- which wins by depriving a diplomat of sleep.

I'd be sleeping in a lead lined Faraday cage for sure.

You would most certainly be working in one (or the equivalent) at least, I'm not so sure about sleeping or living in one after work. Which is why I said the hotel connection leads me to believe it was a surveillance op gone wrong.

> And no single, sonic gadget seems to explain such an odd, inconsistent array of physical responses.

Is it possible the sounds heard were illusory, as a result of whatever caused the brain damage? So not a sonic weapon, but some other mechanism of action?

> The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence.

So something that can be focused at a specific point. If not a sonic weapon, then it has to be electromagnetic?

Talk about bizarre. Whole thing reads like a conspiracy theory. Presuming the reporting is accurate, it's hard not to believe people were specifically targeted with the internet to harm them (rather than the alternative explanation of an espionage technology gone wrong), if the effects were localized on their beds (i.e. a specific physical location where they would be known to be for several hours).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect It's definitely possible for electromagnetic radiation to cause audible sounds. The thing that's confusing me is what sort of motive one would have to do this.

As another person posted. It's probably a surveillance attempt gone awry.

those passive bugs need power to operate

Several small devices with low-powered microwave-beams might be able to do interesting things at beam-intersection points: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

though I'm very weary of the russian boogeyman theory which seems to be behind everything these days..

there is actually a case here assuming russian-cuban ties are still strong after the USSR - e.g. if USA is trying to clean up shop entirely, it could be a warning that such activity will not be taken lightly..

I know it sounds crazy, but my refrigerator beam some whistle alike sounds. If I move my head like one foot beside I don't hear the sound, but one foot on the other side and I hear the whistle.

Edit: I have a video of it, it's not as clear in the video as it is in real life though. You have to put volume at 100%.(https://www.dropbox.com/s/7h7n46kzqarzt0l/fridge.mp4?dl=0)

That's just a normal high frequency standing wave. You're moving your head in and out of the nodes (where the waves destructively interfere).

This happened to me too when I lived in a house near to local boiling station. Once the same truck parked with its engine on near the station (service or supply, maybe), my room had many points where you can easily get panic or stress attacks. It was probably focused infrasound, not high-pitch, but few hours after, especially in sleep, I began to feel it even without that truck. Self-deception is very inductive thing.

I think that the article describes the aftereffects of something like geological activity, so while its roots are real, the consequences are the product of "tired" minds. I heard also that if doctors allow their clients to speak about symptoms in waiting room, then many of them start having these "group symptoms" and diagnostics may go very wrong way.

Is it possible to measure and map those places with affordable equipment?

what's a boiling station? google isn't helping me.

I'm not native speaker, sorry. It is a building where city water is heated and piped further into nearby houses. Heat loss may be high in cold areas afaik (due to old/bad city pipe isolation), so water is heated near living blocks instead.

Like this one (hot link): https://i.sakh.com/info/p/photos/13/131076/f58f5390937072.jp...

Interesting, thanks! In the U.S., I don't think we have hot water delivery at all, water comes to your buildings cold and is heated individually by water heaters in the buildings where it will be used. Although now I wonder what keeps our delivery pipes from freezing in the winter; maybe it just doesn't get cold enough here for them to, when the pipes are underground.

Video on the NYC steam system: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/10/nyregion/miles-of-steam-p...

Called a "boiler house" (in New Zealand).

It seems what happens here with your fridge is only a sign of acoustic resonance

that's due to interference and resonance of plain old soundwaves, I guess.

If I had some R&D spying budgets and no health regulation concerns, I would try to see how I could make remote RMI or tomography work, possibly through walls.

But I suspect something more mudane: a microwave beam, intended at powering a listening device seems more likely.

The weird thing is why the Cuban do not switch it off now that it has been detected.

It seems more likely that it is someone who wishes to harm US/Cuba diplomatic relations rather than the Cuban government.

> Is it possible the sounds heard were illusory, as a result of whatever caused the brain damage?

I thought of that too. Possible PTSD among many of the affected?

If it was a beam of microwave radiation as many others here are guessing, then there may also be evidence of damaged electronics in the beam's path.

The power levels required to cause physical injury are definitely detectable with very simple circuitry (RF diode in series with an LED, and a very short antenna), so these people could carry one on their person to determine if it is directed RF, if it happens again.

Ironically, these "attacks" could be easily defeated by literally wearing a tinfoil hat...

An LED is it's own diode (hence the 'D'), it'd be nice if they worked in the RF domain :) Wonder if it is possible to do this without the series diode for more sensitivity.

Standard LEDs will work into the GHz. You also need a return path for the current (diode rectifies in one direction).. preferably a resistor that puts the decay time constant in a visible period (e.g. few ms).

However, you're correct old crystal radios worked like this. Condenser Mics might also work with some rectification.

From what I've gathered a tinfoil hat would have the reverse effect, acting as a parabolic antenna directing radio waves into the persons head.

Maybe a Faraday cage out of foil could work? It's been asked here before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9660752

It would probably work if you made it out of copper foil and grounded it. But then of course you are no longer mobile and the enemy could easily snip the ground wire coming out of your hotel room. ;-)

Could stick the ground into the ground of an outlet? Barring the risk of missing and cooking your brain in your newfangled electro-cap seems like it'd be difficult to cut the entire hotel's ground.

"Wear a copper cap and plug it into an electrical socket"

See now, this is why they tell people not to take advice from the internet :)

Depends on whether the wearer is:

- facing the threat, whereupon the parabolic antenna focusses the energy on a single part of the brain (and the wearer loses, say, her grandmother or perhaps all words ending in "-ed", etc.) or

- facing away from the threat, whereupon the energy is safely dispersed by the foil.

So one could cleverly use the parabolic foil as a one-time direction detector, asking their friend to wear it for a moment and to please turn to their left or right until something happens? Do this twice with two former acquaintances and you can use their positions and last facing angles to triangulate to the location of the offending equipment.

To protect oneself, one should do a complete head foil wrap (the neck might still be a thruway for danger, since the transmitter could be embedded in the floor, so maybe foil soles for your footwear?) Seems the spies would be significantly easier to spot if this were the typical modus operandi.

This was my thought as well. The sound is a red herring. A large enough EM blast would polarize anything in that room that could work like an antenna e.g. keys, paper clips, anything. Add a magnet near by or even another paper clip at a different polarization angle and you get vibration.

There are cases of tooth fillings causing sound/pain in em fields.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3638/is-it-poss...

> a result of whatever caused the brain damage

That seems to be the obvious explanation to me. They were exposed to some sort of chemical which caused a stroke or seizure or migraine or whatever. Hell, there's no reason to think it couldn't have been a disease.

There is a sound device that acts like a laser, where ultrasonic waves are created such that their interference pattern interact at a specific location, to drop into audible sound at that location only. Perhaps it was something similar, but meant to 'tap a person's ear drum vibrations to hear what they hear, and something went wrong? Just speculation...

http://www.soundlazer.com/what-is-a-parametric-speaker/

I have, on occasion, inadvertently taken combinations of medication that caused extremely disorientating and apparently very loud "buzzing" in my ears as soon as I woke up, combined with a strange sense of immobility.

Of course that entailed no brain damage or loss of hearing, but it was a very compelling sensation, and it caused massive panic (the first time at least, the second time... somewhat less so, but I do get the feeling that I had an emotional response that was in some sense 'synthetic' and due to the pharmacological reaction).

Hence, a subset of these symptoms might be pharmacological, but not all of them. That leaves open the question of motive.

(Yes, I understand that a partial explanation of symptoms and no explanation of motive makes for a totally bankrupt theory, but hey, I just thought I'd throw in my anecdote - and I'd really rather not explain the particular combination of medications.)

This doesn't explain the very local nature of the "attack".

From the first paragraph:

> The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he’d walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room.

Maybe rotating your head affects how you perceive the noise.

In my experience, yes: as soon as I willed myself to move my head, the sound disappeared. But unlike these people are reporting, it never reappeared in the same session. Nor did it have a "structure" in space: it just happened when I regained consciousness.

I remember one trick to get out of sleep paralysis was to turn my eyes (you're always able to open your eyes and look around) and head until the movement was big enough to snap out of it. Once I got out of it and I didn't move much (like if I just turn around in bed) it could easily happen again. The best way to avoid this is to try doing something that requires concentration, like getting up and do something that requires concentration for a minute and then go back.

As I mentioned, I am aware this does not explain everything, but I was trying to suggest that pharmacology could have some role to play in explaining this (though I could not account for all the symptoms, nor for the motive, which might be along the lines of some kind of truth serum or something like that... my experience involved benzodiazepines, which famously are supposed to relax you).

Also, I failed to mention that the intense buzzing sound continued only until I finally managed to convince myself I was not immobilised, and willed my head to tilt. Upon doing this, the 'sound' instantly disappeared. In my (probably unrelated experience) I was immobile because I was convinced that I could not move so I didn't "bother" trying to do so (for what felt like an eternity) not because I was unable to. These people on the other hand obviously wanted to move, and were very much able to do so... and apparently re-encountered the same local phenomenon in various static locations.

So my experience is probably unrelated, but something about this reminded me of it, so I decided to toss it out there.

Although maybe it's very unlikely you could be on to something. I used to have many experiences like this when I was younger (sounds like you're talking about sleep paralysis) and I remember loud buzzing when I also took some medication to help me relax.

When I was in this state I had vivid hallucinations and it often felt like sound was louder. I posted here about hearing my bad phone charger, and I've actually had an experience of sleep paralysis coupled with that once which made it sound louder than it really was in reality.

I tend to agree with you. It probably is unrelated. But the discussion here is so focussed on sonic or microwave beams, trying to finagle the evidence to match these theories, that I felt it useful to report a fairly orthogonal experience that involved no such origins.

It's possible that it is not locality of position but locality of pose. Perhaps the diplomat would only hear the sound while lying horizontal, but the exact position of the bed didn't matter. It might have something to do with contamination with an ototoxic substance (such as gentamycin) and blood flow to the inner ear.

It could be some high power RF field and either be a sidelobe of an antenna pattern, or just a "moire" reinforcement of multiple transmitters.

Side note: of course I was voted down! There's an article about unexplained buzzing sounds occurring to people in beds, I mention reproducible experiences I've had with buzzing occurring when waking up (admitting not to cover all the range of symptoms reported) and explaining how I got myself into that situation, and I get voted down. I just don't understand this dynamic. </rant>

Sounds like sleep paralysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

Unlikely. The affected diplomats explained that they left their beds immediately when hearing the sound, which would have been difficult for someone experiencing sleep paralysis. Nor would sleep paralysis have inset again when the diplomats returned to their beds so quickly.

I believe the parent was referring to GP's experiences, not what happened to the diplomats. Indeed what GP describes sounds like a combination of Exploding Head Syndrome and Sleep Paralysis.

Ah, you are quite correct! I missed the parent comment! My bad.

I believe I've experienced this combination before. I don't know exactly what it was, but my experience matches the description. I thought it was some sort of seizure, but exploding head is a better match. (so thanks!)

I think it was caused by a medication I was taking at the time. It started a few weeks after I increased the dosage, and stopped when I quit.

This didn't happen a lot, maybe 5 times over 2 months, but it was terrifying. I'd feel a strange sensation throughout my body as I was falling asleep, then hear a pulsating noise that sounded "glitchy", like an old CD that was skipping. I couldn't move my body but my eyes could look around the room, and I'd "see" weird shapes and lights. I could kinda make the experience stop and wake up by moving my eyes a certain way, which I guess snapped me out of it.

I used to get sleep paralysis somewhat regularly, now just a few times a year. But it never included the symptoms of exploding head syndrome. Usually it's just the sensation of some malevolent entity standing in the room while I'm laying in bed, unable to move.

I was skeptical whether sound could be focused into a beam, but apparently inventor Woody Norris has developed a technology called Hyper Sonic Sound that accomplishes this feat. As one experiencer puts it - In the sound beam's direct line, you hear the audio signal as if through headphones, regardless of background noise. Outside the beam, you hear nothing. HSS works by generating two types of ultrasonic waves, both inaudible to the human ear. Once those waves reach an object (like your head), they crash together and re-create the original sound. Ultrasonic waves also conserve sound for 150 yards without distortion or volume loss.

Here is his TED talk demo...

https://www.ted.com/talks/woody_norris_invents_amazing_thing...

edit: so I've been reading about this Woody Norris guy; I don't think anyone could possibly be more conceited. From his own website (http://www.woodynorris.com/WhoIsWoodyNorris.htm):

Who is Woody Norris? Quite simply, Woody Norris is a visionary, a futurist. He looks into the future, gathers insights into what will make life better, and applies them to the world of today. He sees things that the rest of us do not. And, as the future arrives, it finds his inventions and products already in place.

I did work experience in secondary school at the MIT Media Lab Europe in late 1990s and someone there had built directional speakers like this, so its really not that unique a piece of tech.

In your experience would it be possible to generate such a beam of sound powerful enough to cause brain trauma, but keep it focused enough so that it is hardly audible outside the beam?

You'd easily deafen them first.

The human brain sits in a cavity of fairly specific volume, rigidity, shape and contents (mostly salt water). One could estimate (or better and easier, test for) the resonant frequency of such a cavity (fasten a sound-wave generator to a similar cavity and test its frequency response)[anyone want to volunteer their brain for science?]. But the human head consists of of a number of cavities (cranial cavity, the sinuses, the mouth, nasal cavities, ear passageways, eyeball, etc.) various bones (jawbone, tympanum, etc.) and collections of liquid (connective tissue, tendon, cerebrospinal fluid, etc.). Each part has its own resonant frequency and sensitivity to damage.There will be at least one resonant frequency for each cavity/object.

One could use a loudspeaker or sonic device at those frequencies (and multiples thereof) to remotely create resonant oscillations inside someone's head. Since you'd be using air transmission, the source would probably have to be powerful, but if the frequencies are out of the range of human hearing then they might not be noticed by someone other than the target.

If this is a weapon, likely lots of effort has gone into finding those parts of the human body most subject to failure.

Best bet for Cuban spies: get a dog. The dog will let you know when he's affected.

If the medium is water, here are the wavelengths:

  20 Hz --- 74.2 m

  20 kHz -- 7.4 cm

Hmm, it does look like resonant frequencies for the interior of the skull might be ultrasonic; or if not then their first or second harmonics are.

Riot squads have non lethal weapons exactly like this to disperse crowds

I don't know if it causes brain trauma, but nausea and immobilization for sure.

It can be done with RF too.

http://www.soundlazer.com/what-is-a-parametric-speaker/

I saw this demonstrated on "Tomorrow's World" in the late 1980s, I think. Did Woody Norris really invent this?

Why wouldn't this be classified?

It is incredibly bizarre that we're reading what is ostensibly the report of a new poorly understand device (perhaps a weapon) used extremely recently against US interests from an unknown source. We classify everything under the sun and 'no-comment' anything that could in any way be remotely related to intelligence. But in this situation, that is genuinely directly related to national security and international relations, we spread this about to be headline news to the point that you may as well have the state department on Oprah?

This seems inexplicable and illogical.

That's a good question, so what do you think might be the answer?

If we work with assumption it's not an accident/idiocy/etc, what is the state of relationships between US & Cuba? Does this send any kind of message and if so who is the audience: Cuban leadership, or local (US) readership, or international readership? Does it change the conversation in any upcoming meeting? Does it alter a stance in some negotiation? Alternatively, and perhaps closer to where you were going, is there a sub-government entity that benefits - a department or an organization? If intelligence community is not in good relationship with or respected by the government does this help them? "We're under a thread, we need more autonomy/financing/powers"? Alternatively does it hinder them - "we give you all this equipment and money, yet you cannot prevent this"?

etc etc. I honestly don't have an answer - but as much as I like to rant against any given gov't as much as the next person (and perhaps more), I imagine there exists one rather than being fully inexplicable and illogical...

This has Russia written all over it. They've been participating unconventional "warfare" for many years now.

Think of cyber/social media activities against the West, propaganda, invading Crimea without admitting to having troops in the area, covert assassinations of adversaries in the West, and psychological operations against Western diplomats in Russia.

NATO restricts their regular military options, so they exert influence in any way they can. I believe the only reason we haven't been told Russia is number one suspect is Trump administration's warm ties to that direction.

perhaps the Trump administration's interest in rolling back Obama's effort to improve relations with Cuba made this news too valuable as a propaganda item to keep it classified. Provided valuable example of their bad intentions. Now that the culprit has become less clear they're already stuck with it out in the news.

Classified doesn't mean censored. What makes you think there aren't 100s of classified documents about this dating from 9 months ago or even before?

You have a valid point. A logical analysis of this event easily reveals certain political motives. The fact that it has been publicized and spun with negative implications for Cuba and Russia is even more suspicious.

I highly doubt that Cuba would take any action to harm its recently improved relationship with the US. Recall that Guantanamo Bay was used as a testing ground for torture techniques and possibly other unethical research by the US. Guantanamo Bay formerly held 245 prisoners, but during the Obama administration this number shrank to 41. This downsize combined with increased scrutiny/auditing of inhumane practices has likely rendered Guantanamo Bay useless to the US for testing living subjects.

If the US were to test sonic weaponry (or any kind of weaponry/agent) on Cuban citizens or Cuban soil, it would be an act of war. My initial speculation is that the US used its embassy as a legal loophole to test weapons on living subjects. The advantages for the US in this situation are two-fold, especially for the current presidential administration; dodge international law and reverse recent advancements in US-Cuba relations.

Some of the sound descriptions in this article sounds very similar to an on going experience I had, although without the health problems (I hope?)

It turned out to just be a bad phone charger. I would charge my phone at night (samsung s4 at the time) and when fully charged and idle it would make a very high pitch and faint sound that sounds like "morse code" or digital noise (I believe the sound characteristics is the CPU doing stuff and drawing power?)

The sound was only be audible in some places of my appartment and it would depend on how my head was turned. I remember hearing this sound even in my dreams.

I've heard this sound outside as well depending on how I turn my head. But lately I haven't heard or maybe noticed anything. I'm also getting older though so maybe I've lost the abiltiy to hear high pitched sounds like that.

Googling "keep hearing morse code" and similar terms reveals that many people have had similar experiences but many wild conclusions.

There might be something shady going on in Cuba but it wouldn't suprise me if bad adapters and sockets would get lumped together with it.

A common cause of this especially in power supplies is "coil whine", and it's caused by someone choosing a PWM frequency for their design in the audible range, or the design emitting harmonics in that range.

I get something very similar from my laptop. Only hear it if in a really quiet room. I thought it might be from my SSD but discussions online seem to indicate some sort of high frequency vibration somewhere else in system. Will try unplugging next time I hear it.

That's just a coil or capacitor vibrating at high frequency. The switch mode power supply changes frequency depending on the load, and when your phone is fully charged the load is low so the normally-ultrasound drops into the audible range.

Nearly all chargers get like that eventually, I guess as the glue or capacitors start to fail.

The reason you can only hear it in some places is because it causes standing waves, and you move your head in and out of the nodes. Basically constructive and destructive interference.

Anyway it is almost certainly totally unrelated. It's always very quiet and doesn't cause any brain damage or any other symptoms.

The more likely explanation for why you hear it in some locations and head orientations, is that the volume is right on the threshold of your ability to hear it. By turning you head, or obstructing the direct path, it drops below your sensitivity threshold. I have a ticking wristwatch that demonstrates this effect very well.

That could be the case sometimes but not usually for high frequency whines. They're can be pretty loud and annoying, and they fade in and out simply by moving - not turning - your head.

I had something making a loud sharp continuous 16 KHz tone in my house in the living room, at least according to an audio spectrum analyzer app.

I'm old enough that 16 KHz is outside my range so it never noticeably physically bothered me. I don't remember for sure, but I think I tracked it down to my TV.

That TV died a few weeks ago and I replaced it. I just checked, and there is no more tone.

Was this old enough to be a CRT TV? Their flyback transformers [1] very often emit a sound of 15.6 kHz, which is very obvious to all younger people and unnoticeable for older folks. I feel I was especially susceptible to this noise, and would frequently change rooms to escape it if the TV was on.

I whole-heartedly welcomed the change to flat TVs and monitors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyback_transformer

The old TV was a flat screen. Samsung UN55B6000.

A painful number of my electronic devices also do this: cell phone charger, laptop power cord, electric toothbrush, surge protector, ...

I go around the house unplugging them at night, and try to keep the doors they're in shut during the day, so the cat doesn't go insane. I'd pay for an ultrasound detector to actually identify remove the buggers permanently, but sadly, my amazon-fu is coming up short.

Santeria spells, or too many mojitos.

Joking aside, mostly likely overpowered microwave espionage equipment they got from Russians a long time ago, and that is still in use.

Google "US Embassy microwave moscow" to find out what happened back in the 70s.

There's also this from several decades earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

The Thing was designed by Soviet Russian inventor Léon Theremin, best-known for his invention of the theremin, an electronic musical instrument.

it probably wasn't.

yes, Theremin invented it, but the patent and production is from American firms. and cmon, if you're bugging a high profile country diplomat, you don't make a bugging device with a freaking opening mechanism!

if that were indeed from Russians, it would have been at least glued shut and not have a hinge.

lmfao i'm pretty sure the image you're looking at is a reproduction of the original for display in a museum and am a bit surprised that i need to have this conversation, but here we are

I'm guessing (hoping?) their comment was being facetious.

Did you bother to read the article? This is exactly what it talks about.

From the HN guidelines:

Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

I failed to notice the word microwave in the article. I even searched the text and "micro" was not to be found.

Edit: nevermind, not from the Guardian article.

It actually does directly mention microwaves:

You're not talking about TFA are you?

Ah my mistake, that was from badcede's article at the top.

I'm puzzled by the motivations behind these attacks. It makes no sense. Who is going it and why?

Is it Cuba's version of deep state? Do they feel threatened they would lose control because there is no longer a western enemy? Is it people within our own government (our deep state) that feels we need to have this enemy or somehow they're benefiting from it? Is it the Russians that want to creat this division to have the option of having a place close to US? Is it factions within our own government wanting to blame this on Russia and take us back to the Cold War and find an excuse for expansion of intrusion, etc?

While the "deep state" idea is only a conspiracy prupoted by right-wing pundits to explain how the Republicans fail to get anything done even though they control all branches of the government, I think there's some credibility to the idea of Rogue faction in the Cuban government or failed surveilance attempts. At least this seems to be the only credible explanation for the fact that Canadians were also attacked

>While the "deep state" idea is only a conspiracy prupoted by right-wing pundits

That is not true. See Glenn Greenwald or Amy Goodman, for example, both well-known left wing (and also some of the most award winning) journalists-[1].

1-https://www.democracynow.org/2017/2/16/greenwald_empowering_...

As I understand it, "deep state" is just a scary-sounding phrase used to mean "unelected career officials". It doesn't mean "shadow government" or whatever you're suggesting might be going on in Cuba.

It is a phrase meant to suggest that those unelected career officials are conspiratorially involved in running things autonomously from the elected officials. I think it's a very partial truth, and agree the scary-sounding phrase 'deep state' probably doesn't really help us understand how things work, in the U.S. at least. The phrase 'deep state' was originally used, I think, about the Turkish government, where it may be more useful/accurate, I dunno.

In fact the deep state isn't widely being used on the right to explain the incompetent GOP. The deep state was being accused of trying to sabotage Trump in general, not the GOP in general (was, because most of that early hysteria has died down). The premise was that the deep state disliked the political idea of Trump ushering in greater isolationism, involving pulling back from policing the world and the military industrial complex with its perpetual war machine.

The modern deep state concept has been widely discussed on both sides of the aisle and has been credible for decades, going back to shortly after the founding of some of the very large and powerful US Government institutions, such as the CIA, FBI and NSA among others - all of which have their own gravity in the politics of the US. It's not a conspiracy, it's the inherent nature of government, politics and power. Nearly every government on the planet will have its own active version of the US deep state, only varying in the specifics and size not the concept.

There's absolutely nothing right-wing about it, either in believing it exists (there's nothing to debate there), or being concerned about it (the left and right were both extremely concerned about its use and power during the Nixon era for example).

So, the US version of Yes Minister / Yes Prime Minister? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister)

The mistake is assuming that sound waves are being used here. You can make the human brain hear sound by transmitting electronic frequencies at it. If someone is transmitting to a satellite using a narrow-band beam that intersects someone’s brain, they’ll be lucky to survive without brain damage from the microwaves alone. At the very least, I would hope that diplomats are being advised by the government to try and record the effect with their phones, to see if it is truly sound-based or if it is actually EM-based transmissions affecting the brain.

I microwaved my skull once with a 0.5 degree beamwidth 15-inch yagi antenna at 1 watt of 2.4 gigahertz once by accident. It was a directional sensation that lasted less than a clock second, as I reflexively snapped around and ripped every wire out of the assembly to kill it with my reptile brain before it killed me. I remember exactly what it felt like, but I can’t say if it triggers hearing or not because it was too brief. The migraine that resulted lasted for hours and I still get sympathetic twinges remembering it.

I’ve also heard stories of a datacenter having a daily failure in a specific rack on weekdays only, that was resolved by moving the satellite dish transmitter next door to point elsewhere than directly through a building.

Combine those two stories and you have a lot more interesting options than just ‘sound’ alone. I hope they’re being investigated.

I was talking about this with a friend last night, and I'm very surprised that no one in the media has even mentioned a technology like ultrawideband through-wall imaging (https://ll.mit.edu/mission/space/Real-time%20Through-wall%20...). I suspect that this or something similar is what was being attempted.

Could it be the attacks are at night because that’s when the diplomats’ cell phone rests on their nightstand? Maybe their electronic devices are the target and it just so happens that the diplomats are close by and become collateral damage.

Edit: I assume an electromagnetic attack. The sounds the victims hear could be caused by that, see Wikipedia links in this thread.

This is something that would have sounded like a conspiracy theory if not reported in a mainstream publication. Amazing what just a little corporate cachet can do for a story.

I think the main difference is not the media, but the fact that the US government acknowledges that the incidents really happened, and that they are investigating.

I saw it reported first in conspiracy sites citing also very doubtful news sites.

The typical conspiracy theorist goes from "wow those f* commies" when such story appears, to "false flag" when it gets to big news. It has some logic, considering last 100 years.

Personally, I just entertain my self, as I don't have the skin in the game and I am not paid to give opinions.

Sounds most likely a microwave attack, you dont damage the brain that way with audio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect

Indeed, the apparent sound heard by victims could be auditory hallucinations or inner-ear injury rather than an actual sonic attack.

am I the only one that feels slight discomfort when a microwave oven is on? it's probably psychosomatic (for me) tho

Unless the microwave oven is severely damaged, the shielding should prevent any "leakage" so it's probably just psychological. If you somehow manage to remove the door and still keep it running, though, things get fun.

"fun"? :-0

Using the Dwarf Fortress definition of "fun" there. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Fun

You should probably replace that oven ASAP, or get rid of it completely to be a retro hipster. :)

I don't have a microwave at home. I cook and freeze batched. use the oven at work.

Wouldn't a "microwave attack" lead to a massive burning sensation? I also think it's far more likely that it's some kind of surveillance technology (or even something less nefarious) with unintended side-effects rather than a legitimate "attack".

At one time the USA discovered that the Soviets were bombarding their Moscow embassy with radio waves. Decades later it was learned that a genius names Theremin had built a device that acted as both microphone and transmitter, when bombarded with a specific frequency of radio waves.

There has been some writing on how it used wave guide effects to transmit, but not so much on the microphone part. Some of you may know that many speakers can be wired up as microphones. One wonders whether a device intended to be a microphone, might in some circumstances act as a speaker as well.

If the Cubans are following an evolutionary path from the device concealed in the Great Seal in the 50's then one could easily imagine something built into the structure of the building itself that is accidentally generating sound energy.

As a thought experiment, imagine that you could build a window frame that would pick up sound from inside a room, shift it to an inaudible frequency and then emit that sound. Furthermore, what if a double pane window intended to block sound from leaving the room, had a pickup attached to the inner glass pane and emitted the high frequency sound from the outer pane so that an external laser could pick it up. Then further imagine that the window was installed wrong way around so that the constant street noise was broadcasting high frequency sounds into the building.

I expect that the Russians don't do this stuff anymore because they get better results from HUMINT, especially deep cover agents.

  If the Cubans are following 
  an evolutionary path from 
  the device concealed in the 
  Great Seal in the 50's then...

That is the furthest idea from my conceptual model of what this all might be. I don't think any of this is accidental. I think deliberate harm is being done, and that willful animosity has permitted the rationale that U.S. officials represent a population of human test subjects, as expendable resources, for a weapon with unknown neurological effects to be used against aggressive enemy combatants.

I think it's a directed energy weapon.

I think kinetic energy is being applied in a novel way, such that patterns of constructive interference are created by alligning harmonic waveforms so that their intersection creates high-signal regions with deleterious effects for biological tissue within said region.

Much in the way electromagnetic directed-energy-weapons can be combined and focused to achieve greater effect, either ultrasound or infra-sound is being used as a kinetic analog with similar results. This is not "The Brown Sound" but something worse.

My first thought was that it is JavaScript fatigue.

Could it be a chemical agent combined with RF or micowave field that activates it?

Seems like pure microwave would cause a range of random hallucinations and sensations. And also accidentally target people who were not spies / employees.

I think biological agent that's activated by EMF is more likely.

I think microwave. Heating of the ear could cause perceptions of sound.

I wonder at this point if the data isn't being polluted by psychosomatic "symptoms" from the diplomats that are now aware of the mysterious events in Cuba.

Yep. Made me think of MPI. Such a paranoid community as overseas embassy staff might be particularly vulnerable,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness

MPI can be difficult to differentiate from bioterrorism, rapidly spreading infection or acute toxic exposure

We might need to add "sonic weapons" to that list.

Sounds like directional microwaves that heated up the brain.

Or some sort of proton or neutron beam.

Beyond sonic a conclusive list of options could also include: attacks with gas form, liquid form, radioactive form, solid form - could be through the meals they ate, the booze they drank, a drug they took, a sea or other animal.

I'm curious if there are any links to independent explanations or investigations maybe from local sources? [1] this from another thread.

[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/44289/sonic-attacks-diplomats-c...

Directional audio has been possible for about a decade now. Holosonics.com is one manufacturer but there are others.

What about walls? And how would you target only one room in a hotel? Multiple intersecting beams?

This not possible with sound waves. EM yes because they work in magic extra-dimensional ether that no one has explained yet. But sound needs an uninterupted physical medium to propagate.

No ether, no magic, no extra dimensions, just radiation. Check out http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae175.cfm for an explanation of how it can pass through walls and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether if you want to know why we know there isn't an aether/ether and how things work without it.

An old KickStarter-backed project that does the same thing is currently available at http://www.soundlazer.com/ . The physics behind it are explained at http://www.soundlazer.com/what-is-a-parametric-speaker/ .

I have one of the soundlazers. Hardly use it because it's particularly punishing on the ears even at low volumes.

Was fun bringing into the office and reflecting sounds off the roof into other cubicals...

The Joseph Pompei quoted in the article is Holosonics' founder. He's been working on this a long time; twenty years ago his demos knocked my socks off (1) at the Media Lab

(1) metaphorical sock-knocking only, no diplomats were harmed by his demos

Do you have any thoughts on why this hasn't seen mass-market adoption? Any major downsides? I have never ever heard of this technology or seen it integrated into the speakers of the big companies in this space. But looking at it just makes me go WOW.

Perhaps it's the lack of bass? For string music and spoken word ultrasound directional audio is fine, but for most music it's not really appropriate.

Imperial War Museum in London seems to employ something like those in their exhibitions. They have black rectangular plates affixed in various places with very localized sound fields underneath them.

Why are they so focused on sound? Couldn't there be some other transmitted phenomena (RF?) that affected the bodily functions at high strengths. At least that seems like a more plausible turn of events.. orient a huge RF dish at the embassy to listen on comms with high sensitivity, oops - someone flipped on the xmit gear and intermittently baked the surveillance targets...

> Why are they so focused on sound?

The reporting and public statements are focused on sound.

As to what the investigators are focused on, I doubt we are getting the full picture since it probably involves lots of things which are restricted info..

Could it be a powerful sonic transmission of data? I mean, EM waves are hugely monitored, so if somebody had to send data secretly, an ultrasonic way may be used. And there may have been a side effect due to too much power and the diplomats being in the middle of the beam.

Depends whether you are aiming to conceal the fact that a signal is being transmitted or whether you "merely" wish to conceal the contents of those signals. The latter is (as I am sure any NH reader knows all too well) achieved my means of encryption, at least some of which, paranoia aside, is widely regarded to be pretty solidly robust to just about anything known (even most of the NSA-quantum-computer speculation is focussed on public key cryptography being attacked by factorisation attacks... lattice algorithms and lots of stream ciphers are not directly attackable by this means if the session key is not exchanged by "potentially vulnerable" public key cryptographic means).

Yeah I was thinking more about concealing the fact there was a signal at all. More like stegano, then. Moreover, that could be in an environment of intense EM jamming: ultrasonic signals would pass but not EM signals.

So, who has close ties to Cuba and has capability to design such weapon and would test it on US diplomats and would win if there was some confusion between US and Cuba relations?

Always look at who has to gain from it and who is capable of

I'm reminded of the Sonic Tank from the old Dune 2 RTS. I wonder if sound is finally being weaponized or if it's actually microwaves as others have suggested? But just as curiously, what is the motivation for this, what could someone achieve by doing this? Is it a form of gaslighting? Or someone trying to sour the relationship between Cuba and US/Canada? (either dissidents or another state) In some ways this has a similar "shooting pigeons with cannons" high-tech overkill smell to it as the polonium poisoning of that Russian in the UK a decade ago.

> I wonder if sound is finally being weaponized or if it's actually microwaves as others have suggested?

Yes, sound has been weaponized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon

> Yes, sound has been weaponized.

Of course it has. Ever tried listening to dubstep?

I see your dubstep and raise you gabber.

that stuff is literally dangerous I think.

South Korea trolls the North by blaring K-pop over the border.

I like K-pop, and I find that hilarious.

my name is a killing word

Oddly enough it would have been super awesome if dolphin scientists were using sonar to attack humans. Ah well that one stays in the realm of fiction.

I would definitely read that as a scifi novel

Very localized sound could that be some resonance effect related to the building? The building looks like it consists of a very regular structure.

There were some studies converting audio to inaudible audio when sent over over pulsed microwaves. This would resolve the size and distance issues for the alleged device and the fact that this was at night and in bed could play into the original studies for using this tech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System

a lot of moonshot movie weapons don't get mentioned too often, mostly because they suck (and were incredibly expensive to develop). there was another one in the 80s that could beam images to your brain or something, it's on youtube as a cnn report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgJ6SpHZir8

of course youtube has a whole sub-culture of people who are 'targeted individuals' and post from inside their makeshift faraday cages as their are bombarded by beams from their CIA agent neighbours, torturing them remotely.

it's probably just interference of some kind.

Ah the internet. Where descriptions of outlandish bizarre groups of people must be prepended with "of course".

I wonder how one would go about detecting that such a sonic attack is in progress. What would the equipment to detect such an attack even look like?

To me, it sounds like a new kind of weapon somebody is testing. We better quickly get to the bottom of it before they scale it.

Have they thought about cuban rum and spirits? It looks like a far more plausible explanation for these night attacks

Cuba is not the only country in the world with alcohol. If they really were stationing drunks in embassies, I'd think that alcohol hallucinations would first appear in the worst places, where they send the worst performing people as punishment.

I'm going to assume you're joking, but after spending a couple months in Cuba and drinking far too much Cuban rum and spirits (while smoking cigars made by the farmer out in Viñales overlooking the most amazing countryside I've ever seen), the only brain damage I got was the hangover the next day.

This kind of news makes me think that wars are not deadly like they were in world wars. Weapons are being so accurate, I don't think world war 3 (if it happens) will result in so many casualties.

So in a way technological weaponry will save civilians. Militarily and strategically, there will no point in using nuclear weapons against civilians too, like it was done in japan.

This kind of news reassures me that conflict is getting "cleaner".

> Militarily and strategically, there will no point in using nuclear weapons against civilians too, like it was done in Japan.

You underestimate the potential of a people for desiring and inflicting misery, suffering, humiliation and "vengeance" upon a perceived enemy.

Just the other day I was reading about the Rwandan Genocide from barely 20 years ago [1]:

> over the course of 100 days, up to half a million women were raped, sexually mutilated, or murdered. There was extensive use of propaganda through both print and radio to incite violence against women, with both mediums being used to portray Tutsi women as untrustworthy.

> During the conflict Hutu extremists released hundreds of patients from hospitals, who were suffering from AIDS, and formed them into "rape squads". The intent was to infect and cause a "slow, inexorable death."

There are depressingly large groups of people in Pakistan who would rejoice a nuclear attack on India, and the other way around as well. Same with people in Korea and China against Japan. I don't know about now, but not long ago in South Korea even children were indoctrinated in hate campaigns [2], something you'd expect from Jihadi religious extremists.

----

If technology really could prevent wars, then we would just have remotely-controlled miniature robots directly assassinating enemy leaders and generals, and there would be no need to maintain militaries and weapons of mass destruction.

But the only thing that would truly prevent wars is not allowing people to sow the seeds of hatred, generation after generation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_Rwandan_Genoci...

[2] http://peterpayne.com/post/61389588306/writing-about-issues-...

It seems like a lot of war these days is for profit. Afghanistan, Iraq and now finally Syria have all been proven to be primarily about that.

From not long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15238683

And see here: https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-...

Sounds like some experimental device broadcasts signals that don't behave well with bed springs.

I dont think it is audio frequency, it must be microwave or just plain old chemical poisoning.

I think it was the X-37B http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/09/06/us-air-forces-x-37b-s...

Why has LRAD never come up?

Ultrasonic power delivery gone wrong?

Whales and Dolphins are finally getting their revenge on humankind.

Collective hallucination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria#Tanganyika_laugh...

Always been fascinated by these. Certainly seems like a possible explanation. It's always hardest to believe about a group of people who one views as more reliable - I mean diplomats, spies etc...one can't help thinking of them as sceptical and rational - but rationality of course is not always a defence against this kind of delusion.

In addition I view Satanic Ritual Abuse as an example of a kind of massively extended verison of the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse

Yes this is the most likely explanation.

How does it explain mild traumatic brain injury?

Odd this explanation doesn't get more attention. I suppose the media wants to milk the story for as long as they can.

Lacking from all reporting so far: What is the purpose of these purported attacks? Who benefits from such attacks and how?

My first thought: Look, this is Cuba. Home of con artistry. They will stage a UFO landing to get more tourists spend convertible pesos. For me P(heard-in-havana-and-true) is around 0.1, max.

> ...baffling US officials who say the facts and the physics don’t add up

This is a long shot, but Cuba is pretty close to the Bermuda Triangle -- a place with a history of strange incidents supposedly involving physical anomalies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bermuda_Triangle_incid...

So is Florida.

That's why Florida has its own tag on fark.com

>>The State Department detected high levels of radiation in the embassy staff, and provided hazard pay to personnel who worked in Moscow.

While this is harsh, these guys are soldiers, working night and day to essentially destroy that country. (we can argue till the cows come home about what system is the "right one") Live by the sword, die by the sword.

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