The consensus on Havana Syndrome is cracking

Maybe you've answered your own question. Directed-energy weapson exist - but the agencies that would have developed this particular capability have said that it isn't possible or doesn't match the reported symptoms. It would be fairly surprising if, between them, they didn't already have a wealth of research on the topic.

It's hard to say what the reality is though - e.g. maybe they didn't want to reveal an existing capabilty.

> [...] urban terrorism. If it doesn't leave any trace and it can penetrate walls, [...]

That's obviously bad, but it's not really terrorism. There's no one universally agreed on definition of terrorism, but instilling terror is commonly a big part, and for that you want people to notice.

Speaking from the point of view of other idiopathic chronic conditions....if it doesn't show up in a blood test or a scan, many doctors will just call it psychological.

I guess one challenge is you'd have to test these weapons on people to see if it causes the reported symptoms

I think having a long range explosives laden drone hit that sports stadium is way more scary. And more likely to come to an urban center as urban terrorism. Unfortunately. My 2c.

You don't have to use it just for winning - consider sports betting, you can definitely place multi-million dollar bets, on the team that isn't a favorite, then use your Havana Ray to disturb a couple key players - make millions, repeat.

Short a company's stock - melt the brains of their c-suite. When the news comes out, you'll make millions.

How do you falsify mass hysteria with that strategy?

> The most scary thing about these kinds of systems seems to me to be the potential for urban terrorism.

A mortar or backpack has a thousand times the potential for urban terrorism.

The technology could also be used by oppressive governments to harass dissenters (and anyone else they might target). Essentially modern, high-tech COINTELPRO.

Look up “Targeted Individuals” - the human mind is an amazing thing

Can’t you make these weapons with the magnetron out of any old microwave? I’ve always wondered why these devices aren’t more prolific than they are…

There's no chance this is disinformation muddying the online argument to prevent people from intelligently concluding that this is a directed energy weapon, of course.

I believe it was hydrogen cyanide, and I believe it was Iran.

> Starting about a decade ago, a small number of Americans, mostly federal employees and many of them working in intelligence, reported similar experiences in Havana. In an instant, they heard a painful ringing in their ears, followed by intense pressure on their head and disorienting vertigo, which was often followed by nausea. Some of the victims developed long-term problems with fatigue or mobility. Other officials later reported similar symptoms while in Russia and other foreign countries, and many concluded that they had been the victim of a deliberate attack with some kind of acoustic weapon.

ototoxic, vertigo, nausea, brain damage

A close inspection of the video evidence released by the morality police concerning Mahsa Amini is quite damning. It appears the morality police allowed some intelligence branch to operate / exercise on their premises but refused to be the scapegoat once things went south. So they released video of her walking healthily into the building, of her searching a seat, but not before quickly glancing back (presumably in response to her name, called out for target lock-on by a trainer / observer "O"). This scene as she selects a seat is also important because the girls are being processing FIFO. Compare the women who are seated right before Mahsa sits down, with the women who are seated as Mahsa stands up. Except for the observer "O", all the women who sat down earlier have been processed and are no longer there, and all the women sitting down as she stands up again were not there before. Except this observer sitting in the midst of the arrested women of course.

Pay close attention to unnecessarily early starts or unnecessarily late endings of the segments: what is it that morality police is showing and why? They are threatening the higher-ups that they have already shared the evidence (minus the explanations) to implicate higher branches of government.

An unnecessarily early start is when before Mahsa stands up (presumably there is a number display). She seems scared and impatient: instead of a morality police officer coming for her, 2 such morality police officers "Bossy" and "Postpony" are seen in discussion. Certain arm movements are seen (extending one arm, while hiding the other hand, presumably to hide a trigger / squeezing bulb). Annoyed "Bossy" is seen demonstrating the things-to-be-done presumably for the umpteenth time (she is clearly impatient with Postpony's stalling behavior). It looks like this would have gone on for quite a while more, were it not for Mahsa spontaneously arriving. I believe she was afraid of the hypothetical situation where she patiently waited until her number was explicitly called out, out of fear that if the morality police accidentally skips her processing, that she might end up in deeper trouble than she already is: they might accuse her of fleeing the morality police to avoid processing. Apparently Postpony was stalling, now that the target has arrived we will quickly see that when thrown in the water Postpony didn't need further instructions to swim. Some quick admonishing of clothing follows, during which suddenly the same arm movements we saw being demonstrated before are executed. Right after the hand or wrist passed close to Mahsa's face. Mahsa has a pain reaction (presumably the eye irritant intentionally added to hydrogen cyanide intended for disinfecting ships/factories/... which usually serves to warn end-users that they need to ventilate the closed space longer before entering). Immediately when Mahsa has the pain reaction and tries to cover her face with her hands, Bossy and Postpony turn their back long before she collapses, and they also take some steps away from any hydrogen cyanide cloud diluting in the air. This is not the body language of authoritarianism. It illustrates Bossy and Postpony knew exactly what could or would happen after administering the dose. Replay that scene and look at the behavior of observer "O". The hospital reported the girl was brain-dead, and the father responded weird pink spots on her skin (just like observed during the holocaust).

I suspect at least observer "O" works in a different branch (aking to Iran's equivalent to CIA training or possibly a chemical weapons scientist, gathering data for dosage setting). It's unclear if Bossy and Postpony are real morality police employees, working under direction of "O", or if they are from the same branch as "O", and pretending to be morality police, who would in that case have been instructed to let the 3 work freely using the facility as a training ground, with Bossy and Postpony pretending to be morality police.

The cochlear amplifier (the cochlea is a mechanical amplifier) is extremely sensitive to drugs. A lot of substances are ototoxic. Imagine unknowingly suffering a non-lethal dose of brain damage, involving ototoxic tinnitus. A cluster of victims emerging above the spontaneous incidence background could share many symptoms, and in the absence of help could erroneously conclude an "acoustic directed energy weapon". Then this is cross-referenced with the symptoms of known directed energy weapons, and promptly considered to be mass hysteria.

During WWI the British developed hydrogen cyanide bombs to launch at German positions. Clearly some chemists in the British army didn't want to be involved in chemical warfare and chose a lighter than air poison gas, so that it would quickly evaporate and diffuse, as opposed to the other trench war chemical weapons.

Hydrogen cyanide may not be effective in trench wars, it seems Iran still considers it effective for assassination, debilitation.

> Just look at the completely made up fears about ODing from fentanyl just by touching it or even just breathing in the fumes.

It's not really made up, it's a case of mistaken identity. Carfent is potent enough that accidentally disturbing an open container of it and breathing in the dust kicks up will knock you out cold. LD50 in the hundreds of micrograms range. Carfent and fent are different molecules, but it's not really reasonable to expect the average person to know they're different. They will however know that fentanyl is particularly potent (which it is, albeit not quite a chemical weapon like carfentanyl) which compounds this misunderstanding.

Regarding #2, then why would US intelligence agencies state that these incidents were not caused by foreign state actors? You'd expect the opposite given your hypothesis.

If true, why did the State Department denounce foreign action in 2021?

> ‘Havana Syndrome’ Noises Were Likely Crickets, Not Super Weapons, State Department Report Says [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42679024

> completely overblown fears of looting in the aftermath of the LA fires (while there's little to no attention on the price gouging and profiteering that's going on) and so on

I’ve seen news mention both looting and price gouging. I didn’t feel any fearmongering or lack of attention related to those issues.

Like a lot of things, it's been definitively confirmed both ways.

The opposite, actually.

A key point I feel, is that psychogenic illnesses are illnesses. People who get them should be treated as ill, and should be entitled to support and respect.

Putting it into the "not a real illness" bucket is why people with ME, and Long covid are so deeply unhappy with the state response to their problems.

I also think that some sort of embassy-operated anti-eavesdropping emitters being the cause is the most plausible explanation.

Embassies are typically espionage stations, i.e. they're almost certainly full of equipment that monitors every measurable aspect of the EM spectrum and probably various other things too. Covertly deploying any kind of electromagnetic weapon near an embassy sounds like an impossibility to me.

But if the embassy's own security hardware caused it, it's very likely that it would be kept secret (also to protect the secrecy around such hardware). It would also explain why it happened in multiple locations.

Respectfully, the issue here was not that intelligence agencies were saying "we have no eveidence of this". first few sentences of the article shows the reality, these agencies were vehemently stating that it was not possible that the Havana Syndrome was caused by bad foreign actors, full stop.

Saying "we have no evidence that directed energy weapons caused this syndrome," is not the same as emphatically saying, "this syndrome was not caused by directed energy weapons," which is what the reporting in this piece indicates was said. The latter is an affirmative statement intended to eliminate doubt and which has the effect of denying the experiences of those affected.

Nailed it! The right stance in most cases is "I don't know, I'll wait until more information is available". Doesn't seem too popular in the social media era, but this should be the default.

"we have almost no evidence" / "we have seen no evidence that" / "there is no evidence that" phrasing, without reference to the extent of investigation incurred or not incurred to ascertain the evidence base, I treat by default as go-to institutional gaslighting until verified otherwise.

> What kind of country lets diplomats and civil servants, or really anyone, drown in medal debt when they’re injured on the job???

ooooh oooh ooh, I know this one. pick me pick me!!!

I'm assuming this was rhetorical though

No, you should read the article. They cite the previous review by seven intelligence agencies. That had been publicly reported, so for folks who had been following it, the consensus was most recently that it wasn't a mystery weapon.

Nope! Most people think this is a conspiracy theory.

Maybe it is maybe it isn't, but it's interesting for both sides to keep in mind the actual state of play as this continues to develop.

For you, who thinks "duh, everyone knows this was a weapon", it's interesting to know that no, your perspective is being skewed somehow, probably by the media you consume.

For me, who thinks "duh, everyone knows this was a paranoid conspiracy theory", it's interesting to follow the actual investigation into it, because maybe we're wrong.

You mean like mass x-ray scanning? That would be extraordinarily dangerous, but I suppose it might be possible given the right conditions.

It'll just mean that China is behind this, which means the tariffs are actually benign and justified response, not kickstarting a trade war. It'll be the truth, some new kind of Truth (Social.)

I don't want to sound apocalyptic, but I think the media and political narratives of the mainstream lost all reality checks in the past few decades (not for the first time - historically, it happens ever-so-often), which means that there's no point trying to reconcile them with facts mentally. It's tiring and pointless - politicians, commentators, and the public allowed their Overton windows to slide way too far from the reasonable. It'll pass - meanwhile, we can only hope the effects won't be as pronounced as if ImageMagick finally broke for good.

WWIII was ended when the US dropped the world's first beauracracy bomb on Brussels, followed by an assault of, also unprecedented at the time, regulatory-capture missiles.

It's not expected that the Brussels that existed prior to the war will ever be seen again. It is expected that it's populace will continue to decline for the foreseeable future.

If by adversaries you mean "allies", then they're way ahead of you.

While I think you may be right, I wish you could find a way to say it which is evidence based, and something we can look at more deeply. Because right now, what you said carries the preface: "In my personal opinion"

I read the atlantic precisely because I am sure it doesn't align with my non-US, world view. I want to understand what vaguely rightist, middle-of-the-road corporates and old school william buckley types think. I don't mind reading things I may disagree with. I'm tired of reading things grounded in fantasy which is what Fox sells. At least the atlantic is grounded in a version of ground-truth I can usually get behind, and is clear when its opinions, or reflecting opinionated sources.

This isn't a joke.

At one point, the narrative (2021) landed on this native insect whose frequency was so loud that you could "hear it from inside a car while driving [40+] mph down the highway" (paraphrased).

Was this debunked or just another conspiracy™?

edit:

> The heavily redacted report notes that “many” of those reporting symptoms described hearing “unusual sounds” but states that in only one instance someone experienced medical symptoms immediately after hearing the sounds. The report goes on to say that JASON could identify “no plausible single source of energy (neither radio/microwaves nor sonic) [that] can produce both the recorded audio/video signals and the reported medical effects.”

Instead, the scientists wrote that the most likely source of the sound heard in the recordings is the Indies short-tailed cricket, whose call, it says, “matches, in nuanced detail, the spectral properties of the recordings from Cuba.” Still, the report hedges, saying that “other hypotheses are plausible,” including that the sounds were created by a mechanical device or “structure-borne vibrations.” [0]

[0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/havana-s...