Havana Syndrome most likely just crickets: declassified Dept of State report | Hacker News Reader

Havana Syndrome most likely just crickets: declassified Dept of State report

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72 pointsgraderjs34 comments

As far as the Foreign Service experience goes, you're in a strange country where you often don't speak the language so everything is difficult. You may not be well liked, or worse, may be hated, and people may be trying to kill you. The opposition security services openly tail you wherever you go, bug your house, your telephone, and on top of that, your own CI people may be spying on you. The pressures to perform at work for Foreign Service are enormous, since (unlike the civil service), if you don't get promoted in a specific time window, you're fired. You work in a fish bowl, and cliques form mainly of effective people vs the dumb ones. It's extremely hierarchical, and if you're low on the totem pole, and you're ineffective, you're ignored and left out of the loop.

Often the security services routinely surreptitiously break into your house and rearrange shit in your fridge, or other head-fuckery, just to intimidate you, and just to show they can.

It's extremely difficult for people who aren't prepared for that environment. The ones that crack are usually civil servants overseas for the first time for domestic agencies like IRS, Social Security, FBI, Commerce, etc. Most larger embassies and consulates have a State Department shrink working there, for good reason. People lose their shit all the time. It's not particularly rare.

Additionally, in the more difficult countries, you are essentially living with the people you work with. That can induce some particularly cruel claustrophobia.

So, it's no wonder people are driven mad, either by each other, the environment or just crickets.

> Often the security services routinely surreptitiously break into your house [...]

This isn't uniformly true.*

I would say the newness of being in an unfamiliar place alone (e.g. 'the golden handcuffs') is enough to cause Havana-syndrome-like symptoms.

* source: sample size of 1, but: grew up in the foreign service, never once observed or heard this happening to my / other families.

No it's not. It's not rare in "criteria" countries however. And being tailed and followed is routine. It's something you grow to not care about.

Do you think it's possible this "breaking in and rearranging your refrigerator contents" could be in your head?

They mentioned in a separate comment that it was part of the briefings, so that seems unlikely: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28738326

It's routine in some major countries, like China.

There were reports of brain anomalies on MRI scan in "Havana Syndrome" victims. What would we make of those?

You're referring to the study in JAMA (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2738552)? I don't claim to know with any confidence, but there are many possible confounders, so there's not necessarily anything we need to make of it if there are other reasons to believe the syndrome is psychosomatic. (For example, their control group doesn't seem to have lived in Cuba.)

Sure, I don't discount the possibility of malicious attack. I cannot however discount human frailty.

But in answer to your question, it would depend on the quality of the medical reports. It doesn't seem, so far, that the science can be widely replicated or is clearly pointing to maliciously directed activity. I believe there is a Canadian study that suggests exposure to chemicals. I don't know how that study has been received by peers.

Could be prior anomalies that, themselves, contributed to the syndrome? It would be a hell of a coincidence, but not impossible.

Sure. In the same vein, it may be the case that once upon a time a child abduction was attempted at WalMart by guys in a white van. How that incident caused mass hysteria on Facebook is beyond my ken.

I thought you were being sarcastic, but giving the benefit of the doubt I looked it up, and, well... No sarcasm. That happened. Wow.

there's brain anomalies in any sufficiently large sample of people, so the first thing would be to establish whether there's an usual amount of them, or you'll be fooled by randomness.

Also it would be pretty weird if people who have neurological symptoms don't have brain anomalies, given that this kind of goes hand-in-hand regardless of what the cause of either one is. Migraine patients often have neurological anomalies in the brain, doesn't mean someone caused them with a laser. People who experience Havana Syndrome style symptoms might be predisposed to overreact to, in this case apparently crickets, because they have some neurological issue to begin with.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221315821...

Often the security services routinely surreptitiously break into your house and rearrange shit in your fridge

That sounds like horrifying gaslighting. Any evidence of this? It just feels like now days you need a camera in your private rooms (at work and at home) because god knows what kind of allegation someone can throw at you, or if the cops come and say you did some shit when you really didn’t etc. A camera connected to the cloud at all times.

To your larger point, I agree that humans can crack. It doesn’t take much when you are alone and no one believes anything you are saying. Imagine someone follows you around and briefly points a laser pointer near the ground. Imagine they do this daily, just for a second. Try explaining it to to others, they’ll think you’re mad. Try explaining it to cops or a shrink. You’ll go crazy in no time.

You better record every waking moment if you want to stand a chance, but by then, you’re already insane.

Yes, I have personal experience with this. It was relatively common in Moscow, and in fact was a part of that station's (and others) security briefing. This was in '92 however, when camera surveillance equipment wasn't readily available to the public cheaply. I suppose being easily detectable that sort of fuckery is less common nowadays .

That’s extremely sadistic. I fear those who can take part in something like that more so than explicit acts. Just rob the place, but don’t do demented stuff like that.

I don't want to give the impression that a Foreign Service career is fraught. My 30 years were gratifying and I often felt I was taking part in history, instead of merely reading about it.

You're not paying for rent or utilities. Your children are provided (generally) with very good, very expensive educations going to school with children of diplomats of other countries.

The pension is fantastic. It's good work if you can get it. Salaries are low initially, but as promotion kicks in, sooner or later you're making real money. My salary at retirement was a little over 160k a year, which is not bad for generic IT support. I retired at 62.

> In a series of secret memos sent back to Washington, described to me by several current and former U.S. officials who have written or read them, diplomats reported that Russian intruders had broken into their homes late at night, only to rearrange the furniture or turn on all the lights and televisions, and then leave. One diplomat reported that an intruder had defecated on his living room carpet.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russ... (2016)

I feel like using Russia as an example of the standard US diplomat experience is probably misleading. I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised if similar things happened in South American or African embassies, but a combination of our history with Russia and its general temperament has got to make it a one of the places most prone to this sort of non-direct fucking with people.

Furniture rearranging is a hallmark of the East German security service. The DDR museum is fascinating. Plus lots of naked people!

Yeah, I think it’s about time to stop using that phrase, “low on the totem pole”. Remarkably ignorant and insensitive. You already even used the word “hierarchical”… we get it.

Thanks for calling out that is considered an insensitive idiom. TIL I learned that it's factually incorrect, too.

Could you explain for those of us who remain ignorant? Not really a phrase I tend to use anyway but it would be useful to understand the additional context.

In America we can get unanimous support to provide healthcare for CIA agents suffering from a disease that doesn’t exist, but giving free healthcare to regular people is politically unthinkable.

https://www.collins.senate.gov/newsroom/bill-support-%E2%80%...

Forget about "normal people", it took a famed TV star and comedian just to ensure that politicians would maintain the 9/11 victims fund going

Interesting. Here in the Netherlands this is called "laag frequent geluid" and is becoming more and more seen as a health problem. Primarily because it can drive people nuts...

In cities with a lot of industry you can call the environmental service for such a thing and they will come and do measurements [1]. The health department of the government also has special pages on it [2].

[1] https://www-dcmr-nl.translate.goog/overlast-door-bromtoon-la... [2] https://www-rivm-nl.translate.goog/geluid/laagfrequent-gelui...

> this is called "laag frequent geluid"

"Nuisance due to hum or low-frequency noise", in case anyone was wondering if it was literally a higher level of cricket-awareness in the Netherlands.

The title seems misleading, from the article: "Noises linked to mysterious injuries among US diplomats in Cuba were most likely caused by crickets".

Also:

>"The 2018 JASON report, which was commissioned during the last administration, is not aligned with the Biden-Harris administration’s understanding of AHI [anomalous health incidents] and it has not informed our response," said a senior administration official, in a statement sent to BuzzFeed News.

>"Because of the acknowledged shortcomings of previous studies, this administration has purposefully established a new panel of experts from across the Intelligence Community, academia, and the private sector with access to the full range of information available to the government to help us determine the cause of these incidents and generate new insights that can help protect our personnel.”

It's hard to fully capture the context here in a headline, but the report isn't just talking about the noises. They conclude that the prevalent theory of some kind of directed energy weapon is "highly unlikely", although they don't claim to fully rule it out or definitively identify another cause. The fact that the Biden administration is commissioning another report doesn't indicate much about whether their conclusion is right; there's all sorts of reasons to commission a report.

Or it's like 8 or 10G radio freq technology that certain govs use.

It’s actually just an icy fractal aggregate ejected from a protoplanetary disk and was heard because swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the sound from Venus that caused the damage to those involved.

Unlike the "high energy magic lazors" this seems actually feasible, yeah, heh

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