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Comment by salt-thrower | Hacker News Reader

I take every CIA press release with a huge grain of salt as it is. But a presser about a mysterious ailment heavily suggested to be an attack perpetrated by Cuba, at a time when American media is hyping "anti-government" protests in Cuba, and U.S. officials are calling for more action to be taken against Cuba as a result?

I'll take the whole salt shaker.

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It's not heavily suggested by the CIA to have been perpetrated by Cuba; I think that's an incorrect assumption on your part.

Since the incidents, involving up to 130 U.S. personnel, have happened in Cuba, China, Russia, and elsewhere (including at least one possible incident inside the U.S.) it would have to be someone with the resources to carry out such attacks across the world (and the CIA director said as much if you listen to the interview). The most likely culprit being eyed by Pentagon officials is Russia (as previously reported[1]), but the CIA director chose not to name names during this latest interview even when directly asked if it was Russia.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/us/politics/biden-cia-bra...

I think it's become very politically incorrect/insensitive to suggest psychosomnia in the 21st century.

See: many (but certainly not all) long covid reports.

Of course it’s been heavily suggested! They have been openly hypothesizing this is some sort of directed microwave attack on people, from Cuba.

Articles by the NYT initially put the microwave hypothesis hand in hand with strained US-Cuba relations!

Of course now it’s being revealed that people in other countries are having it so it’s hard. But they’re actively implying this is some microwave super weapon (it feels so absurd that when talking about it even Obama alum Ben Rhodes basically talks about it as “allegedly some weapon thing” in a “don’t believe that” theory).

I’m curious what is going on here too, but definitely don’t believe the weapon hypothesis compared to the much more banal explanations that we all know.

Sure it was, when it was first discovered five years ago. Sure the initial reports suggested that, years ago when maybe it did strain relations.

It's 2021.

It was "hypothesizing this is some sort of directed microwave attack on people, from Cuba", because it originated from Havana, Cuba, affecting Americans, Cuba's adversary. Once it started to appear in other locations, even in DC, that isn't main hypothesis anymore.

> definitely don’t believe the weapon hypothesis compared to the much more banal explanations that we all know.

Although nobody knows what is behind the phenomenon, you must admit that it's strange that it seems to only occur to American staff at those locations. It may not be a weapon, but it does seem to target American facilities. For all we know it could be a malfunctioning American system inside those locations.

You offer no counter-evidence to gp. I've never seen it seriously suggested that Cuba is doing it.

There might've been speculation that Cuba allowed it or supported a foreign operation, but "from Cuba" doesn't mean "by Cuba".

Logic tell me that "it would have to be someone with the resources to carry out such attacks across the world" 99% point to USA?

Not trying to disclaim you, but this part of reasoning seems rather weird. Even China has more global influence than Russia? Or even UK, France, German.

If you think this attack by "enemy", why not just kill someone? I mean, given the length of what's happening, it must be that there is no way to obtain concrete evidences.

Russia would know for sure that US would accuse Russia anyway, even without any concrete evidences; which has been the behavior pattern of US for quite a long time.

Turns out that, if we follow logic, then we can fairly sure that this is indeed a unsolved case. And more investigation is needed. And that's what CIA chief is doing, and I think CIA chief is doing something right.

Russia and China easily have the resources to carry out clandestine ops around the world. Given that this seems to do with signals / electronics, it may not require particularly large teams or equipment.

I think many more countries could do this around the world... I'm not sure about Cuba, but maybe even yes.

Do you think that the majority of people read the full article?

Do you think the CIA thinks the majority of people read the full article?

Do you think the CIA engages honestly with the press to simply provide information to the public?

GP's analysis is correct: the CIA knows that people will read vaguely and shallowly and take away a confused anti-cuban sentiment, and this is their intended outcome. "Heavily suggested" doesn't mean "actually, if you read the full article, they didn't say that", it means they're heavily trying to suggest this.

>the CIA knows that people will read vaguely and shallowly and take away a confused anti-cuban sentiment, and this is their intended outcome

If the CIA's goal were to foment anti-Cuban sentiment in relation to Havana Syndrome, why would they have the press write articles which don't blame Cuba, and depend on the public not actually reading those articles but still making the connection by vague association... rather than simply blaming Cuba, so the articles would blame Cuba, and even people who read the articles would make that association directly?

You're reaching. This isn't part of some subtle CIA propaganda double fake, it's just the result of Hacker News preferring to depend on commenters to provide context for articles they don't read.

Because directly blaming Cuba would be all downside, no upside. If they directly and straightforwardly blamed Cuba, Serious Readers might actually wonder about their basis for doing so (as there isn't one), and might actually think critically about what they're reading. But if they blare "HAVANA SYNDROME" at the top, the majority take the intended message, and the Serious Readers say "well it's all very complex, there's a lot we don't know, who can say?"

> heavily suggested to be an attack perpetrated by Cuba

Every article I read has suggested Russia may be likely, but only as an early suggestion, and they only used "Havana" because that's where the initial incident took place.

This is why reading articles is important.

Much like the people who can't get over the simple "UK strain" or "South Korean variant" of COVID merely because it was initially identified in those countries.

Labels can be used innocently. But they can be used maliciously (e.g. "the China virus").

Once a malicious variant has been found, we should stop using it.

It is not distracting to call a variant "Delta" instead of a country. If anything, it removes distractions.

I don't get the logic behind terming "China virus" as malicious use, while we call past viruses names such as "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" and "Spanish flu" and "Japanese encephalitis". The only difference between one and the rest is that its host country it was named after raised a ruckus about it in a highly biased and obliging media under a belligerent president, while the other countries either did not care enough in the past or in the present.

Originally people were using "Wuhan Flu", which was consistent with norms. Then the CCP launched a massive international PR campaign to declare that racist. Then the CCP started domestically claiming it was from the American government and calling it the American virus. At this time Andrew Cuomo was calling it "a European virus" to appease China.

So Trump started saying "China virus" out of spite. Trump supporters followed suit.

He also called it the "Kung Flu."

Here are the arguments that the WHO used in 2015 to change the practices for naming new infectious diseases:

https://www.who.int/news/item/08-05-2015-who-issues-best-pra...

What is the practical benefit in assigning the variants names based on the country of first detection? What happens when a second new variant is detected in South Korea? (in reality, it seems no novel strains have yet been detected there: search "Korea" on this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2)

No valuable time is wasted plucking letters out of the Greek alphabet. The names are easy to remember. As long as they are applied consistently, who cares?

We are fast approaching the limit of the Greek alphabet.

Better than country names, though.

Fortunately there's a little extra capacity available by using Greek ligatures/numerals like "stigma". It's a ligature combining "sigma" and "tau", and is also used as a numeral representing the number 6.

I can't wait until they start using three greek letter acronyms and all the fraternities and sororities go up in arms.

If Delta is keeping mum I assume everyone else will too.

> What is the practical benefit in assigning the variants names based on the country of first detection?

It's really easy and natural to do that, since the name evolves straight out of the conversation. Especially when it's something new, unknown, and no one really understands what's going on.

> No valuable time is wasted plucking letters out of the Greek alphabet. The names are easy to remember. As long as they are applied consistently, who cares?

That's an artificial naming convention that had to be designed. And it might not be as practical as you assume it is. IIRC, NOAA recently abandoned a similar Greek-letter naming convention.

Some valuable time is also wasted with people needing to answer "WTF is that?" when all the sudden sources start talk about stuff like the "Beta variant," or people having to explicitly explain connections that would have been clear with a geographic name. As someone who has been following the news, the headline "India variant 2x more transmissible than UK variant," would have let me skip reading the article, since it told me everything new I needed to know (e.g. India outbreak caused by new more transmissible variant).

If you read up about this, there are multiple very reliable sources for different attacks of this nature, in various locations, most not tied to Cuba in any way, going back quite a few years now. I especially recommend Marc Polymeropoulos as a source: 26 years in the intelligence service and was a target.

Given the CIA's well-documented history of openly lying to the public (Colin Powell comes to mind), I don't consider a 26-year member of the CIA to be a particularly reliable source.

I'm not denying that this could all be true. Even if it's true, the timing of this press release with everything else going on about Cuba in the news is a very obvious strategic play. This is old news, why release a new statement about it right now of all times?

Any intelligence service worth their salt (I can't get away from the salt theme today) would obviously use media statements as part of their strategy. It stands to reason that anything the CIA says or does in the public sphere is well-planned and has intention behind it that we can only guess at.

There are also some well documented competence problems.

In the mid 2000s the Canadian Mint was briefly stamping poppies into their coins and putting a red enamel on them to commemorate remembrance day.

A CIA employee found one in his pocket coming back from Canada and claimed the Canadian government was planting listening devices on a coin to record him.

Just my reaction take on the Marc Polymeropoulos guy, i watched some videos and i don't trust him. Feels like they made up a story and he is the designated person to tell it. Also maybe unrelated how come he doesn't have a Wikipedia entry?

Why would anyone trust someone who worked for or works for the CIA exactly? Their job is to lie to people and be good at it.

This phenomenon has been observed for quite a while (at least a few years) now, so there goes that theory.

And aggression against Cuba by the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus has been going on for six decades. Accompanying that has been numerous press releases, op-eds, and articles over the years attempting to sway public opinion towards U.S. intervention in Cuba. This fits right into that pattern. I'm not saying it DEFINITELY is that, hence the "grain of salt" phrase - I just view any CIA statement relating to Cuba with a huge degree of skepticism. That's all.

There is no sway and if so by who? I think you may be nitpicking. Don’t forget the Cuban thaw under Obama. Instead of following the media, follow actual policy. I have no doubt Biden will follow suit with Obama’s policy on Cuba.

I am not sure if we will see Biden follow suit. Biden's Homeland Security director said

>Allow me to be clear: if you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States

At a minimum they don't want the refugees from Cuba. It seems quite clear they won't relax the immigration rules for Cubans.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-homeland-security-secretary-...

I'm not aware this ever changed under Obama. Obama's policy had to do relations to the Cuban government and not the status of refugees.

I am not sure if an official policy changed, but typically, in the past, if a Cuban refugee made it to the US they were granted amnesty.

I'm not sure I understand your comment. The Cuban thaw under Obama was largely reversed by Trump, and Biden has not done much of anything to relax the embargo again since his term began (but correct me if that's wrong).

Any press release is a form of PR, and the CIA is no different. Government officials release press statements all the time in order to sway public opinion on a specific issue.

In recent history, the buildup to the Iraq War is a perfect example, in the way that demonstrably false statements to the media and deliberate misdirection were used to gin up public support for the war. There are several great documentaries, books, and podcasts that go over it in great detail. I highly recommend looking into that period of time as an example of what I mean by "sway."

> Accompanying that has been numerous press releases, op-eds, and articles over the years attempting to sway public opinion towards U.S. intervention in Cuba.

My point is that your statement above is made incorrect by actual policy.

> was largely reversed by Trump

Again you are incorrect. Trump actually made very little changes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/06/trump-cuba-...

It still represents a reversal towards a more aggressive stance.

Also, this is worth pointing out: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094612

EDIT: I'm still not sure what you mean by "incorrect when it comes to actual policy," in case that wasn't clear. The policy of the U.S. has been to prevent Cuba from engaging in international trade as a sovereign nation for decades. That is still the case. Even during the pandemic, Cuba was not allowed to receive vaccine supplies from the international community, and had to develop their own. What is that if not an act of aggression?

The embargo can only be lifted by Congress.

What Trump says and does are two different things. Follow the policy. He never actually reversed it.

> EDIT: I'm still not sure what you mean by "incorrect when it comes to actual policy," in case that wasn't clear. The policy of the U.S. has been to prevent Cuba from engaging in international trade as a sovereign nation for decades. That is still the case.

There cannot be a campaign to sway public opinion for US intervention when there has been a policy in effect for the warming of relations for the last 7 years. It's a contradiction in policy.

> There cannot be a campaign to sway public opinion for US intervention when there has been a policy in effect for the warming of relations for the last 7 years. It's a contradiction in policy.

That is simply not true. I don't know how you can see the current situation as "warming" just because a few select economic interests have access to the island now - the vast, vast majority of trade and economic activity is still blocked by the United States. I'll repeat again that pandemic aid of all things isn't even allowed in.

Also, it is absolutely the case that different areas of the U.S. government can have seemingly different attitudes and policies towards certain issues. The government is not a monolith, and the intelligence apparatus especially is almost completely unaccountable to any outside interests, including Congress and the judiciary. Your assumption that that "oh well Obama let cruise ships go there again, so the CIA must have completely given up their decades-long goal of overthrowing the Cuban government" is way off.

EDIT: and before you say something like "the CIA is beholden to the executive branch, so they must be in sync" I'll just repeat again that your view of the policy as "warming" is a big stretch. TL;DR: Obama's slight relaxation of the embargo doesn't mean that the intelligence services don't still want to destabilize the Cuban government and pursue U.S. intervention, and if that is the case, press releases to gin up anti-Cuban sentiment would be part of that playbook. Those are absolutely still compatible. I rest my case.

Attacks targeting U.S. intelligence personnel were reported, beginning in late 2017, in locations around the world, including in Moscow, Russia; Poland; Tbilisi, Georgia; Taiwan and Australia;[82] other reports came from Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Austria, among other countries.

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

Look, I don't agree with US policy towards Cuba but arguing that the whole thing is a PR campaign isn't very persuasive either. It might be a case of psychological contagion among a relatively small and insular community (ie the diplomatic corps) or it might have some factual basis. There's some evidence (detailed elsewhere in this thread) to suggest the latter.

Skepticism is good, but I think your argument here is mere contrarianism.

Did you read the article? Despite the name of the syndrome, I see no-one directly pointing at Cuba for the ailment.

The name is the thing. For the same reason people didn't like when Covid was referred to as "the China Flu." The name creates a negative association. Names, phrasing, and associations can be very powerful.

So despite all the evidence in the article, you're going to assert that the CIA, despite explicitly saying they don't know where exactly it comes from, is trying to blame Cuba for it to destabilize them, because of the name?

You realize part of the issue with the "China Flu" label was conservatives beating the shit out of Asians?

You realize that there are no reports of US citizens beating the shit out of Cubans because of Havana syndrome? And that a niche affliction in the foreign service is different than a pandemic killing 600,000 domestically?

You're reading too far into what I'm saying. I was not likening it to the phrase "China flu" in that I think the CIA is encouraging hate crimes against Cubans. I'm saying that the name of any phenomenon is able to generate an association and a sentiment about what it's named after.

> you're going to assert that the CIA, despite explicitly saying they don't know where exactly it comes from

The CIA has a long and well-documented history of lying to the public. I'm not asserting that I know what's going on, I'm asserting that the CIA has previously used interviews and media statements to influence public opinion about countries the U.S. is seeking to destabilize. Colin Powell is the most famous and egregious example in recent history. This is obviously not as overt as what Powell did, but every statement the CIA makes to the media should be viewed in that context.

Maybe they can solve Gulf War Syndrome next.

I can't find where the CIA suggested Cuba as the culprit. (Trump did, but then hardly anyone takes him seriously).

The incident is also very old (2016) and happened in multiple locations worldwide.

Username checks out. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Lol, I knew someone would make that joke

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