Explanations for the Havana Syndrome
backreaction.blogspot.com
backreaction.blogspot.com
Is this really a “no one knows” situation? The Great Seal bug[1] was in the Moscow embassy and it needed microwave irradiation to function. We also know that the USA suspected that their new embassy building had similar devices planted in the walls. [2]
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
2: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/06/18/u...
https://mdsafetech.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/biological-ef...
Then at that point the signals should stop
shortly after because there is no point in
powering devices that are no longer working.
Think about it: if we find listening devices, disable them, and the ultrasound/microwaves abruptly stop this would strongly suggest that (1) we've found all the devices (2) the microwaves were indeed specifically for the listening devices (3) the planter of the listening devices is also the party responsible for the ultrasound/microwaves, which is significant because the number of parties that could have physically planted the devices is surely lower than the near-infinite number of parties that could be broadcasting the ultrasound/microwaves.
An adversary would surely want to keep us guessing, and would not want us to see such a clear correlation unless that too was an attempt to fool us. So they would likely want to continue with the ultrasound/microwaves even if they weren't getting a response from the listening devices.
This seems like an "appeal to secrecy" fallacy. There's no obvious reason to keep such information secret (cue ten people speculating something random but no hypothetical here is clear here and the US government's incentive to show seems fairly high).
The simple explanation is that it is psychosomatic and the arguments against that are weaker than they seem (as has often been the case over the years).
That’s what it seems to me as well. Could long term stress cause white brain matter to reduce in mass, for example?
Another possibility is that some are just fabricated. Many of these individuals are CIA or other intelligence agencies employees. Telling lies and making up cover stories is what some do professionally. Here they are in an embassy which with a new Trump presidency was not that awesome of a place to be. They see one of their colleagues say they heard a sound, have headaches, difficulty concentrating. That person perhaps got a medical leave with pay. Perhaps extra pension for injury on the job, on foreign soil. They just have to say they too have those symptoms. Well you get the idea…
Until last month, there was no medical leave or compensation of any kind for such injuries (psychological or mental health related injuries) so there's little incentive to make up such injuries. Furthermore the initial set of reports were submitted confidentially, so unless a large group of employees were colluding with one another and to this day never managed to get caught about it, it's unlikely to be that either. It's worth noting that the CIA highly scrutinizes its employees and is incredibly selective about who they hire, which doesn't mean that some of them wouldn't lie or even commit crimes... but it would be very difficult for them to successfully collude with one another for such little benefit since all it takes is one person to decide not to go along with it and then everyone is in some deep shit.
There is some plausibility that it's psychogenic, induced by stress. The FBI originally came to this conclusion in their investigation but some later studies conclude that while stress was likely a major component, it does not explain the auditory phenomenon. Certainly it's possible for some people feeling stress to hear phantom noises, but for a large group of people to all hear noises within the same geographical location and over the same period of time is quite unusual. I mean there are plenty of stressful and ordinary jobs people work everyday but you don't hear about how a mass group of nurses working overtime due to COVID are all of a sudden having auditory hallucinations, or other stressful jobs resulting in large groups of people all experiencing somewhat similar symptoms.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/02/11/chronic-stress-predispo...
From the article:
"There are other reasons to think that purely psychosomatic reasons don’t explain what’s happened. For example, the first cases in Cuba were treated confidentially and didn’t appear in the news until six months later. And yet there were several different people suddenly seeing doctors for similar symptoms at almost the same time. Those symptoms came on rather suddenly and were reportedly accompanied by strange sounds. The affected people described those sounds as sharp, disorienting, or oddly focused."
I don't know what actually happened and details overall are scarce. The only thing I know is that ruling out psychological effects is difficult to rule out and the kind of argument you quote above has failed in other instances.
... Is this the right assumption to make based on what we know about how US intelligence and the US government works (historically)? There are any number of reasons why these people would have an interest in keeping it secret. It might not seem rational to you because you have completely different priorities and values, but that doesn't mean other people won't think it's rational to keep it secret.
The thing I'm pointing out that it's problematic to automatically dismiss contradictions to ones' argument by saying that these are explained by secret government actions when there's no clarity about what would or wouldn't motivate those actions - ie, if you assume secrecy takes care of all contradictions to your theory, you can prove anything.
A tricky thing about secrecy is that it exists to reduce clarity. If you had another sensitive way of gathering information (an insider, for example) you would not want an attacker to draw that conclusion by just sharing everything, by default. You will want to keep this motivation secret as well. Embarrassing the enemy has the lowest yield.
One very obvious one, actually: if this is a weapon, then there's strategic value in concealing how much the gov't knows about it. This should be obvious, because it's been true for decades, if not centuries - the less your enemy knows you know about their weapons, the better. For instance, if (again, if it's a weapon) the gov't knew how it worked, and how to counter it, then the developer would begin to develop the next version of the weapon, and so any mitigations now would be useless - conversely, if the government didn't know how to counter it, then the developer could continue to deploy it with impunity. For another concrete example of this principle, look at the Cold War bomber gap[1].
And the government wouldn't have nearly as strong of an incentive as you would think. The creators (China? Russia? Cuba? Kekistan?) could (and do) always claim that the US is just making stuff up and it's not them (and people like yourself would believe them).
From the lack of response to the continued cyber-attacks from various countries over the past few years, it doesn't seem like the public would care very much, either. Or, the public might not believe the government - the white house released documents that claim that Edward Snowden was a compulsive liar and not the hero that the public believes him to be (although there's already good reason to believe that's the case even without those documents - just look up the fraction of leaked documents that were actually related to spying on US citizens), and everybody just says "oh, they would say that, wouldn't they" - so what's the point of revealing strategic knowledge to your adversary just to try to convince a public that's already made up their minds?
> The simple explanation is that it is psychosomatic
No, the simple explanation is that there is something physiological going on. Assuming mass hallucination (or whatever) is the convoluted, complex explanation. You want to explain how people's dogs are having these psychosomatic episodes[2]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap
[2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04/mysterious-health-at...
If that means a psychosomatic cause is very unlikely, why did they only feature that information in an interview with a newspaper rather than in the conclusion of their paper? Do neurologists train to know what damage psychosomatic illnesses can cause to the brain?
From my understanding, their paper basically just compared every possible metric from the "victims" with a sample group, and listed the significant differences. When you compare scores of different metrics, it becomes more likely some of then are significantly different.
Sabine is doubtful of such a prospect because her analysis seems to be based on the idea that mass hysteria must arise from newspaper articles, and those were written much later, therefore mass hysteria unlikely. That seems like a silly assumption. Such events commonly occur in closed or tightly knit communities or institutions, like schools. An embassy/intelligence station is such an institution.
Citation please.
I guess I was wrong that it was "one or two", it was about three. You can argue I was also wrong with "vague symptoms", since they did leave to get medically checked out., but read the footnotes, [6] in particular.
So my comment was incorrect in the specifics, but the important thing is that the transcript is an indication that mass hysteria is still a perfectly plausible option. Citations [2-12] are from the podcast.
> Let's set the scene. It's 2016… and government officials from the U.S. are working in Cuba -- and before they even get there, they're warned -- it's going to be a little hostile.
> TG: they're told - you know, you don't have any privacy, you're going to be listened to, your phones are going to be tapped, you're going to be followed on the street[2]
> This is Tim Golden, Editor at Large for ProPublica.[3][4] Tim and a colleague tried to work out how this mystery started…
> TG: Initially it was all very murky, and it was unclear what was going on…
> They dug into this - talking to more than 3 dozen officials and poring through confidential government documents.[5] And Tim told us that Patient Zero was a young CIA officer
> TG: Who had been a fairly athletic guy[6] who in December 2016… wakes up one night because he hears this loud, piercing sound in one ear…and it seems to be following him around the room[7] He feels unstable… nauseated, and soon after said he couldn't think properly[8]…. Just over a month later, two other CIA officers say the same thing happens to them.[9]
> TG: Hearing a kind of a sharp sound that was a kind of metallic sound and then they had had headaches and dizziness and other symptoms that had followed that and being sort of shaken by this
> These CIA officers were sent back to the US to get checked out-- and a doctor said they'd sustained serious injuries.[10] When the top guy at the Embassy heard this -- in late March[11] - Tim says he called a staff-wide meeting to tell people what they knew.
> TG: You know everybody had to leave their cell phones outside and go into what’s called a SCIF - a sensitive compartmented information facility - so you know, a secure, windowless room
> He said that some people might have been attacked -- described the loud sound, the weird symptoms. And told diplomats that if they thought they were getting hit... they should move away from windows. At the the time, the US Government's best guess about what was going on - was that this was coming from some kind of sonic device[12].
[0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQd3rwju7de2NP7Q...
[1] https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fWVwFPU3cUka8lfaSKU2V
[2] “Before we go to Cuba, it is drilled into our heads: There will be surveillance. There will be listening devices in your house, probably in your car. Assume they are always watching.”
[3] Tim Golden; Editor at Large: Tim Golden is a journalist and filmmaker who has worked primarily on issues of national security, foreign policy and criminal justice.
[4] Tim’s first ProPublica article on the Havana Sonic Attacks was published on Feb 14, 2018. And here’s Tim’s second ProPublica article on the subject
[5] A ProPublica investigation of the case, based on interviews with more than three dozen U.S. and foreign officials and an examination of confidential government documents, represents the first detailed public account of how the Cuba incidents unfolded.
[6] it was not until the end of December that the first victim sought help at the small medical clinic inside the embassy. That officer — the fit younger man in his 30s — came with a more serious complaint: He had developed headaches, hearing problems and a sharp pain in one ear, especially, following a strange experience in which something like a beam of sound seemed to have been directed at his home.
[7] According to Science magazine: the agent said he had heard “a really odd, loud noise that seemed to follow him in the room,” says Hoffer, who examined him in February.
[8] An individual assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba was awakened one night at home in Havana in 2016 by severe pain and a sensation of intense pressure in the face, a loud piercing sound in one ear with directional features, and acute disequilibrium and nausea. Symptoms of vestibular and cognitive dysfunction ensued.
[9] On December 30, 2016, Patient Zero in the Cuba crisis visited the Embassy health office... Around January 9, 2017, the same C.I.A. officer reported a second incident to the medical office.
[10] The New Yorker (details confirmed through other interviews): In early February, 2017, Michael Hoffer, a professor of otolaryngology at the University of Miami, received a call from a State Department doctor, who told him, “We have a problem.” Hoffer—who had worked with the military to treat head traumas, and had kept his security clearance—agreed to help. He soon saw one of the victims, and in the following months others flew to Miami. Hoffer ran a battery of tests, which confirmed that the C.I.A. officers had sustained serious injuries.
[11] In late March, DeLaurentis convened a town-hall-style meeting for staff at the Embassy. Several of Lee’s colleagues came forward to report that they, too, had been exposed. And : At the end of March 2017, recalls the U.S. diplomat who spoke with Science, then Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis summoned personnel with security clearances—about 30 in all—for a classified briefing in a special installation in the embassy. Also, confirmed through Conversation on Background
[12] The “working hypothesis,” the diplomat says, was the victims were being targeted by a long-range acoustic device
You were completely wrong WRT what you were trying to assert with that comment.
>...transcript is an indication that mass hysteria is still a perfectly plausible option...
But, rather than reconsider your position upon discovering that you were mistaken, you immediately pivoted to finding other ways to justify your conclusion. And, you do so with this really odd, rambling epistle of footnotes that essentially amounts to, "it's possible".
Sure, anything's possible, but I prefer proof along the lines of the altered brain matter findings in many of the sufferers. Do these physical findings affect your conclusion?
It's really odd that you're working so hard to dismiss this. Are you aware that if this is an attack, the attackers would want people to dismiss it as hysteria or otherwise? Are you aware that they'd push propaganda to that effect? Does that fact impact your eagerness to dismiss it?
I think your argument that I'm falling prey to foreign propaganda is pretty weak. Nevermind that the same logic applies in the other direction as well. We can all scream "CIA/KGB stooge!" at each other, or we can look at specific claims and require specific evidence. Especially from organizations that have every means to provide it.
My "conclusion" leaves open the possibilities and looks at the evidence.
Your conclusion is that this is likely mass hysteria, which you "supported" with a wall of text that is essentially a statement of possibilities, masquerading as evidence. This, after invalidating prior info I presume you'd relied on. In all you are, in effect, working really hard to hold a specific line and prove a negative, which in itself is odd. Why do you think that is?
No. The logic does not apply in the other direction. For one, if these are attacks, then there is motivation for the attackers to propagandize in exactly the manner you are demonstrating/repeating here. OTOH, the idea that the U.S. is somehow propagandizing here means...what, exactly? They've made no definitive claims beyond acknowledging these incidents exist and that they are investigating them. They've even allowed that mass hysteria is a possibility they've considered.
So, no, your vague "both-sides" allusions that I am equally likely being manipulated by U.S. officials doesn't hold up.
The thing about propaganda is that we're all susceptible to it and, by definition, it primarily works without our awareness. But, there are things we can do to filter and identify to protect ourselves, even if it's by likelihood versus by certainty.
So, applying that, I'm saying that while I'm not certain you've been had, it seems pretty likely at this point. And, whether or not you care to acknowledge that, one thing you cannot deny is that your premature, dismissive conclusions here are in lockstep with the propaganda known to be promulgated by guilty parties.
Correction: They've investigated the possibility of a psychosomatic etiology. I've not seen any official U.S. acknowledgment of the specific phrase "mass hysteria", which denotes something qualitatively different.
And I don’t have a strong conclusion, I can’t do psychology from behind a keyboard and I’m not trained anyway. I said Sabine’s assumptions about mass hysteria type events are wrong, and that it’s actually pretty plausible in this case given the circumstances.
Think about all the stories of cops “overdosing” after touching fentanyl powder. “Serious” establishment media are slavishly cooperative with the security state, and they publish these articles all the time, even though you can ask any doctor or do a literature review and find it’s impossible. Havana syndrome has a better chance of being true, but it’s in the same ballpark.
And I think the idea that the propaganda argument doesn’t go two ways is laughable in 2021. Have you not seen the last 5 years of brinkmanship with Russia and China, most of which is bullshit (Steele dossier kompromat, bounties on soldiers in Afghanistan)? And Havana syndrome got money in a bill recently! Seems like the best way to get healthcare in the US is to be a smol bean in the CIA.
Are you aware that even the government report that ruled microwaves as the "most likely" cause says that all available evidence fits a psychogenic cause? Nobody needs to justify that conclusion, nor do they need foreign propaganda to believe it.
They misremembered some of the details, but the broad strokes of "a few people had issues, and then there was a meeting telling them they were in danger" was still true. That creates the perfect environment for hysteria.
I see another comment of yours on this thread that suggests neurologists don't train to identify neurological damage that results from psychosomatic disorders.
Right. So, even the physical evidence that has been detected you write off as the result of psychosomatic damage. These people are showing up with detectable brain injuries and you're declaring here on the internet that they're psychosomatic and neurologists just aren't trained to understand it. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?
It's hard to imagine mere dupes pressing the agenda this hard. But maybe you're just trolling.
Either way, I'm going to stop debating reality with you and your friend now.
That asks a question. I have no idea how much training neurologists have about psychogenic illnesses. All the study showed was the differences in the measurements, it does not mention any potential cause or really whether those differences explain the symptoms.
>So, even the physical evidence that has been detected you write off as the result of psychosomatic damage. These people are showing up with detectable brain injuries
First, psychosomatic illnesses can cause physical evidence. Besides that, something like three people had detectable injuries, the rest of the ~40 did not. There could be a very banal cause for that.
Again, the US government's own report says that that a psychogenic cause completely fits the available evidence. Suggesting that is the cause isn't trolling nor have I been duped into this position. Your complete denial of it makes no sense, I fully admit further evidence may show me to be wrong but you refuse to see it as a possibility.
(I would link, but most results are of a PDF & linking those never goes well for me)
tl:dr standing waveforms and infrasound can do some strange things to humans.
It should significantly reduce the signal strength though.
Mass hysteria still seems the most plausible.
Microwaves and ultrasound are not just there or not there. Besides all the usual frequencies and amplitudes, and different mixes of those, there is modulation, which can vary in unlimited ways. For example, you can amplitude- modulate microwaves at ultrasound, infrasound, and/or audible frequencies. There are infinitely many other possible modulations harder to describe, simpler ones involving harmonic relations between modulations.
It is traditional among physicists to insist that the only possible effects of electromagnetic fields and radiation is from heating, but this is absurd on its face: practically everything that happens in your body involves ions interacting, usually across membranes. Eyes don't work by light heating your retina. The molecules in your retina, or molecules like them, may appear in any tissue, for any reason. They may respond to photons accidentally, or for some evolved fitness reason which might have nothing to do with how they respond to artificial events.
For many decades it was career death in biology to even mention these things. You couldn't publish papers about them; trying made you unable to get grants. George Becker author of "The Body Electric", somehow got a free pass, working for the US Veterans Administration, where he demonstrated systematic effects of sub-nanoampere current on healing processes. (I attended a talk by an American biologist who was presenting in Hungary in 1987 because she could not at US conferences.) The chill on such work has not dissipated.
So Sabine is only barely scratching the surface of what might be happening.
Even more, it's confounded by picking a control group and a study group and then asking "what's different?" without necessarily knowing why X should be different. What reason do they have to think white matter should be less? Afaik, none. It's something like p-hacking.
But again, haven't read the paper.
Microwaves, on the other hand, directed by large panels of phased array patches, can not only focus and track objects through walls (i.e. radar vision), with a proper control system, can focus intense CW or Pulses directly on a moving target, like a persons skull. These were not surveillance attempts, these were focused attacks on lone victims who weren't carrying microwave field meters, nor any RF protection. Both the Russians and Chinese have the technical skill and motivation to develop these microwave attack systems. What is not clear is whether there are magic frequencies and waveforms that cause more neural damage than ordinary microwave white noise. Exciting resonances in particular biological molecules could possibly cause enhanced long term damage, with fairly low peak power limits. This type of research, of course, is kept secret.
Nice euphemism for coup d'etat...
I recall asking a signals intelligence person once if jamming is ever a problem on battlefields. He said no because any jammer is emitting a signal and that tends to also say “fire missile here.”
Same would apply in this situation I would guess.
> Brose describes an incident in which someone, likely a member of Russia's intelligence community, spuriously called the mother of a Ukrainian commander and told her that her son was dead. She then hurriedly called his unencrypted cell phone to try to confirm whether this was true. When he called her back to tell everything was okay, Russian troops geolocated his forces' positions from his cell phone signal and hit them with a rocket artillery barrage, killing him in the process.
Followed by
> comments on this blog are permanently closed
I think it’s most logically a geo-stationary satellite, so wherever launches those might have more information about who might have a radio transmitter or two up there.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7809823/havana-syndrome-canadian-...