Hacker News Reader

Comment by ergot_vacation | Hacker News Reader

What baffles me is this: what's the endgame here? If you're a spy, and you assassinate someone, that has clear benefits. Same with bribery, blackmail, etc. What does making someone briefly ill and possibly giving them minor brain damage accomplish? Are they hoping to scare diplomats away from these regions? That seems unlikely to work.

View on HN

Lets think for a moment: if there's actually a team of spies using this technology it could be a production level tech, or prototypes with somewhat strong science behind it.

Then they would know much more about what exactly are they doing with people's brains. Wait for it..

What if all these cases are just the failures? The actual damaged brains are others, and the damage is much more specific, like in high energy based strong psychological conditioning, making those other - invisible, not detected yet - targets, think and pursuit goals projected to them by the adversary forces.

It is also possible that the investigation team is suspect as well. Both Cuba and Austria are Russian area of influence strongholds.

>minor brain damage

Any brain damage is much more impactful than you think.

If I could guess it would be grey zone tactics to affect the most amount of people and inhibit their work. If you attack everyone there is less information pertaining to motive than a single target can get you.

I think it is a broad stroke attack that should not occur.

>Any brain damage is much more impactful than you think.

True. I guess the endgame may be "dumbing down" the "intelligence agency".

I doubt they are doing it to dumb down the agency. Any time you trigger a disruption or emergency protocol the entire operation is more vulnerable.

An order of magnitude more staff in any US embassy are spies than diplomats. If this whole thing isn't a mass-hysteria, then the idea would clearly be to scare the spies away, rather than the diplomats.

supposedly, they are practicing on diplomats. the endgame is that it can be used on anyone given relative proximity. any head of state, commander of army, anyone labeled as enemy

You can practice on anyone, you don't need to target diplomats, and it's not clear what that would gain.

Imagine any protracted conflict, if you can give the other leadership group minor brain damage, you'll more likely be able to out maneuver them.

Why does Russia keep poisoning dissidents? They could clearly assassinate or disappear the targets instead.

I think Russia does it to send a clear message it was them, to dissuade others from going against the state.

idk if this article mentions this, but the article I read in the WSJ made mention of a victim who was forced into early retirement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com