There is no substance here. A few people have vague ill symtoms due to some unknown cause.
Good article on it: https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fighting-crisis/2020...
https://reason.com/2020/09/01/the-feds-who-made-americas-fen...
In these cases, the symptoms always come on totally unexpectedly and abruptly, and immediately dissipate if the victim walks away and return if they return. And they just so happen to only occur in Havana and Moscow rooms with American and Canadian spies and diplomats (aka probably undercover spies, in many cases) in them, with the exception of these three reported DC/Virginia cases.
I could write like a whole 20 page essay on this with all the circumstantial evidence that makes me think it's likely legit. I recommend reading that GQ article in full if you haven't (https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...).
I think it's likely some percentage of these cases are psychogenic, and it's even more likely for the DC cases, but I think it's more likely than not that a lot of them are real. It definitely might not be some kind of microwave weapon, but whether it's just some kind of noxious chemical or some crazy invention, I'd bet on it being real and deliberate. I'm a very skeptical person and tend not to buy conspiracy theories like these, but I think there's enough substance at this point to consider it likely, IMO.
If you wanted to bootstrap a mass psychogenic illness, it'd be harder to come up with a better scenario. You have civilian employees of the US government living out of their comfort zone, in a foreign country that is putatively "the enemy". You're eating unfamiliar foods, sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings, and all the while being told to be on constant alert for the dangers posed by your host country.
> And the reports are very specific and not vague
Some may be specific, but you're significantly overselling this. There are inconsistencies in both the reports of the affected individuals and what data has been allowed to be released by the US government.
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2021/03/nas-report-on-havana-s...
I recommend giving that GQ article a full read if you haven't (https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...). It goes into a lot of detail and isn't just some fluff piece. Their sources also claim to have identified FSB personnel near victims at the times of the attacks using the same method Bellingcat used to track and locate Navalny's FSB assassins (leaked telco geolocation data purchased on the black market), as well. That alone doesn't necessarily mean anything beyond surveillance, but it's interesting.
I absolutely could be wrong and it could all turn out to be a mass psychogenic episode. But I'd put my money on there being something here, even if I have no clue what it is. (It could be something as "mundane" as poison or some kind of harmful aerosol.)
This is likely propaganda that you've been had by. No, I don't have political views that inform this opinion.
>Much of the information we used for our investigations could never be found in most Western countries, but in Russia, is readily available either for free or a fairly modest fee.
They tracked FSB agents' geolocation positions using this data. Note these are just random private citizens with no special access to anything or anyone.
From the GQ article:
>The most compelling evidence, however, came from publicly available data. As has been widely reported, mobile phones track people’s movements, and location-data companies accumulate this information and sell it. Using this sort of data, CIA investigators were able to deduce the whereabouts of Russian agents, and place them in close physical proximity to the CIA officers at the time they had been attacked when they were in Poland, Georgia, Australia, and Taiwan. In each case, individuals believed to be FSB agents were within range of the CIA officers who had been hit in 2019. In two of the incidents, location data apparently showed FSB agents in the same hotel at the same time their targets experienced the onset of symptoms.
>When I asked Polymeropoulos about the CIA investigation, he said that it was conducted after he retired and that, because he did not have direct knowledge of it, he could not comment on it. He did say, however, that it would not be difficult to use the same techniques, analyzing publicly available data, that had been used by organizations like Bellingcat, which have employed similar methods to expose Russian operations in Europe. “Anyone can buy the cell-phone data on the open market, and you can see where people went,” Polymeropoulos explained. “And perhaps the reason why it seems to have worked is because, just like you saw with all of the GRU activities, they’re sloppy.” GRU machinations were discovered because officers had made several embarrassing missteps, like leaving behind taxi receipts that showed their starting address as GRU headquarters. In the case of the microwave attacks, it seemed FSB operatives had brought their phones with them while carrying out their missions—typically a no-no in the world of covert operations. “There’s ways intelligence officers cover their tracks,” Polymeropoulos marveled. “If I’m going off to do something like that, I’m not taking my phone. It’s insane. It’s so sloppy.”
Definitely could be CIA propaganda. But as Polymeropoulos explains, if Bellingcat could do it, the CIA definitely could, too. Maybe Bellingcat could even retroactively try to confirm this, perhaps.