New evidence "Havana Syndrome" caused by GRU sabotage squad of Russian Military | Hacker News Reader

New evidence "Havana Syndrome" caused by GRU sabotage squad of Russian Military

washingtonpost.com

28 pointsck222 comments

Why is this an opinion column? If the evidence is there, wouldn't that be regular old reporting?

Because the journalism part was already done by Der Spiegel, 60 Minutes, and The Insider. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-russia-evidence...

The opinion article is a reaction to that, and assumes you're already familiar with the investigative aspects of the story.

Because the journalism occurred elsewhere, and this is an opinion resulting therefrom.

The last two paragraphs are straight up policy recommendations from the editorial board. That wouldn't be accepted as news reporting.

Fair. I guess then I'd ask why an editorial board is making policy recommendations :P

Because they run an newspaper and want to use the power that that grants them.

Because it's not news journalism but something else.

https://archive.is/UdvN9

I always forget some people can't see wp links

I think this is the rule that stops the annoyance

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I still think mass delusion is the most plausible explanation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness

I highly doubt mass delusion is real. What other illness is always diagnosed not with supporting evidence, but lack of evidence for alternatives? It’s a bizarre leap given the known incompleteness of medicine, that only gets more bizarre when you dig into specific examples: it happened before the discovery of pathogens, yet we assume doctors didn’t miss a pathogenic cause? Everybody who drinks a certain batch of Coca-Cola gets sick, but if it’s not a contaminant that was tested for, it must not be a contaminant? It spreads more between people who spend more time together, and this is considered evidence is spreads via psychological closeness?

No, this is the same old bullshit: doctors, like politicians and businessmen, depend on an image of expertise, and an assertion of mass psychogenic illness is a non-disprovable way to preserve it when evidence-based diagnosis can’t.

Why? You have more evidence than the journalists involved in this investigation?

Some of the people with credible claims are professionals with many years of experience.

It's happened at several other locations and the new evidence shows GRU was in the area at the time.

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

My personal theory is people were easily "tagged" somehow like the famous umbrella tap attack, maybe a laced drink, and then the area they were known to be in was radiated with a specially calibrated radio wave. Without an obvious poison these people would be written off, yet they would be too sick to function, perfect sabotage without being credited.

I’m struggling with motivation. You don’t need to attack a superpower’s diplomats to test a weapon. What were we doing in Havana that Moscow cared so much about?

You can read about that in the article. Most of the affected personnel had done work with Ukraine / Georgia.

> Most of the affected personnel had done work with Ukraine / Georgia

Sending a message with a clandestine attack vector doesn't make much more sense. Unless they were actively doing work for Ukraine or Georgia from Havana. Again, to the extent that attacking a superpower's diplomats makes sense.

Note that I'm not casting doubt on the findings. Just struggling with the risk-reward calculus.

I think it helps to recall that the same people who allegedly ordered this were the same people who thought that the risk-reward balance was in FAVOR of a second, all-out invasion of Ukraine.

I'm not sure what to make of this either. The public medical reports are suggesting psychogenic illness, which does happen. You'd also think something would show up from public medical evaluations. But these recent reports are saying there's information that isn't being made public, and I know from my own professional life that certain kinds of brain injury are notoriously difficult to detect on brain scans. And then in one of these recent stories one of the people said their phone battery exploded or burst open?

As for the benefit cost analysis, a CBS piece said this:

"Edgreen said the officers targeted were top performers.

'And consistently there was a Russia nexus," he said. 'There was some angle where they had worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and done extremely well.' "

One of the reports said one of the FBI agents was interviewing a Russian agent repeatedly over a long period of time.

Also, there's been a lot of suspicious deaths of foreign diplomats with ties to Russia in the last several years.

Anyway, I'm kind of scratching my head about this as well and am not sure what to think, but it doesn't seem implausible to me in the very least, at least from a political-intelligence-security angle.

It may not be sending a message. It may be degrading the opponent's capabilities to oppose what Russia is doing.

Reminder that every declassified doctors report has brought it down to mass hysteria, worsened by sleep deprivation and high stress. Symptoms ending when people leave would suggest this is not, in fact, a weapon.

There have been hyper detailed brain scans showing brain damage.

Read this article in your dev tools

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