US investigating attacks with hallmarks of ‘Havana syndrome’ near White House | Hacker News Reader

US investigating attacks with hallmarks of ‘Havana syndrome’ near White House

cnbc.com

50 pointsadventured19 comments

This is making my spidey-sense tingle. It seems similar to Waubra disease (ie 'Wind Turbine Syndrome') [0]. A list of vague symptoms that no one can quite agree on, over a vague timeline.

Think about the last 6 years. Have you or anyone around you had some weird health problems? How about the slightly older people that you know?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_syndrome

I assume you're arguing here that this is "no big deal", but I think it's disingenuous at best to assume that no wind turbine installation has ever had problems with noise pollution, especially in the infrasound region.

For millennia, we dismissed sailors' tales of rogue waves until we caught one with a scientific instrument.

I was just the only example I could think of where general negative health claims are made without specific evidence of harm.

A rogue wave is a specific, provable event. This is more fuzzy like mysterious bad RF waves (or was is sonic waves?) from ... someone?... that maybe gives you a headache (or was it hearing loss? or brain damage?) but only for certain people.

I definitely could be wrong, but like I said, it makes my spidey-sense tingle.

The Wikipedia article[0], has some interesting speculation about this. Main ideas behind the cause seems to be either some directed energy pulse or potentially a ultrasound weapon. These kind of invisible weapons are utterly terrifying to me and I feel that they'll just become more prevalent in the coming decades.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome

So this a super hot take, but someone is asking for an ass whooping. This is basically an act of war. I'm going to just leave it at that. This isn't some random hack, kinetic attack demands kinetic response.

Who exactly would you like to go to war with? The martians?

Who ever is intently committing war crimes against diplomats on American soil. did you not read the brain damage part?

Attribution is hard with digital attacks.

In hacker communities, it's considered best practice to avoid making enemies — a good policy.

As mentioned, this is a kinetic attack.

Attribution will still be hard, but the motivation to attribute (correctly) will be much much higher than most cyber attacks.

And what if the US was the one who created the technology and started using it first?

Who ever made the order to use it on non-soldiers in a non-combat zone should go to jail for life.

It seems like some wideband audio and RF sensors would be able to easily detect this. If it's skull penetrating, I doubt you would even have to place them that densely to detect something out of the ordinary, regardless of the directionality of the source.

There's probably a government contract opportunity for a wearable detector here.

The recent National Academies study for the Department of State seemed to not think it is ultrasonic: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Ha...

Some kind of pulsed RF/microwave seemed to be the most likely?

Thank you for sharing this. It’s helpful to see that others have put substantial work into this problem.

How focused would this need to be to target this particular area? Shouldn’t we see people nearby also affected?

If you want to learn more from first hand accounts, listen to a former CIA agent talk about his experiences.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5jTbsvd3rA

"Wherein we are joined by Marc Polymeropoulos, former CIA officer and victim of what may an attack by a directed energy weapon.

Polymeropoulos served 26 years in the CIA before retiring from the Senior Intelligence Service in June 2019. His positions included field and headquarters operational assignments covering the Middle East, Europe, Eurasia and CounterTerrorism. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the Intelligence Commendation Medal, and the Intelligence Medal of Merit."

Sigh, time to break out the faraday cages then.

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