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Government Medicine

'Havana Syndrome' Not Caused By Energy Weapon or Foreign Adversary, US Intelligence Says (theguardian.com) 68

Posted by BeauHD from the anomalous-health-incidents dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The mysterious set of symptoms known as "Havana syndrome" was not caused by an energy weapon or foreign adversary, US intelligence has concluded. The assessment concludes a multi-year investigation into approximately 1,000 "anomalous health incidents" (AHIs) among US diplomats, spies and other employees in US embassies and missions around the world. Victims reported brain injuries, hearing loss, vertigo and strange auditory sensations, among other symptoms. Many suspected they had been victims of a targeted attack using some kind of directed energy weapon.

Of the seven intelligence agencies that undertook the investigation, five determined that "available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents," according to an unclassified version of the report released Wednesday by the House intelligence committee. Those five agencies deemed foreign adversary involvement "very unlikely." One considered it "unlikely" and one declined to state a conclusion.

The assessment involved a painstaking effort to analyze syndrome cases for patterns that could link them, as well as a search, using forensics and geolocation data, for evidence of a directed energy weapon, unnamed officials told the Post. "There was nothing," one official said. The officials told the Post they were open to new evidence that a foreign adversary had developed an energy weapon, but did not believe Russia or any other adversary was involved in these cases. The intelligence agencies "judge that there is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or collection device that is causing AHIs", according to the unclassified report. "In light of this and the evidence that points away from a foreign adversary, causal mechanism, or unique syndrome linked to AHIs, IC agencies assess that symptoms reported by US personnel were probably the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary, such as preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors," the report reads.

Three agencies have "high confidence" in that assessment, three have "moderate confidence" and one has "low confidence."
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'Havana Syndrome' Not Caused By Energy Weapon or Foreign Adversary, US Intelligence Says More

'Havana Syndrome' Not Caused By Energy Weapon or Foreign Adversary, US Intelligence Says

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  • Medical treatment? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @07:47PM (#63334265)
    At some time I recall a possible culprit was a medical treatment against tropical diseases .Was it ruled out after all?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Narcocide ( 102829 )

      It's the pesticides they're using on the flower beds. A contractor used something banned so that's why nobody has thought to check it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That seems unlikely because of the number of countries that it supposedly happened in. They wouldn't be shipping gardening chemicals around the world in diplomatic bags, they would buy local stuff.

        • In this case they used teleportation and time travel, explains both why they were using something banned decades prior and how they got it to all the various geographic locations at once. I know that sounds like crazy talk but this is how it is, and why probably nobody officially investigating this will ever figure it out. But in either the first or one of the first stories about these incidents linked on Slashdot, someone in the discussion pointed out that the symptoms exactly matched the known symptoms fo

  • Psychological then? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lije Baley ( 88936 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @08:09PM (#63334319)

    Could it be that people who are paranoid about working in those situations make themselves sick? Seems that this kind of thing is hardly unprecedented, and if there's no other evidence...

    • "preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors,"

      Yeah, perhaps they could examine the working conditions & what the station chiefs/senior management are like at those partiuclar embassies. Perhaps some consistent characteristics might emerge? Not the sort of thing the US govt would want to uncover though.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by myowntrueself ( 607117 )

      Could it be that people who are paranoid about working in those situations make themselves sick? Seems that this kind of thing is hardly unprecedented, and if there's no other evidence...

      They are working in very close proximity to high energy and top secret intelligence gathering and communications arrays, which would be generating very strong EM fields. Of course, they can't even remotely suggest that CIA or NSA might possibly be involved in this.
      Must be the Chinese, its the only thing that fits the narrative.

      • Did you miss the part where they said it was very unlikely that a foreign adversary was responsible?

        • Did you miss the part where they said it was very unlikely that a foreign adversary was responsible?

          Oh no. But the lack of self-blame is also evident.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hAckz0r ( 989977 )

        They are working in very close proximity to high energy and top secret intelligence gathering and communications arrays, which would be generating very strong EM fields.

        This would not fit the narrative. It was highly directional and some experienced it in D.C. on the steps right outside their building in a protected area. Numerous people in a wide variety of places.

        The thing is I could create such a device in my basement without any high tech equipment. Making it highly directional in a compact form would take some financing but the the technology is fairly easy. The hard part is having enough power to drive the transducers necessary to produce pain and nausea rather than

        • They are working in very close proximity to high energy and top secret intelligence gathering and communications arrays, which would be generating very strong EM fields.

          This would not fit the narrative. It was highly directional and some experienced it in D.C. on the steps right outside their building in a protected area. Numerous people in a wide variety of places.

          The thing is I could create such a device in my basement without any high tech equipment. Making it highly directional in a compact form would take some financing but the the technology is fairly easy. The hard part is having enough power to drive the transducers necessary to produce pain and nausea rather than just simple audio signals. You simply create a focused beam of microwaves modulated by other frequencies until you find a mix that has the desired effect. Any sound experienced by the individual is actually generated in their own head where the frequencies mix and are down converted into frequencies that no longer pass through bone and flesh.

          A commercial example of this technology, but far too under powered for this particular purpose:
          https://www.holosonics.com/pro... [holosonics.com]

          I have felt this myself. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt it would be quite painful if the power had been turned up.

          IT WAS YOU!!!!1111

    • > Could it be that people who are paranoid about working in those situations make themselves sick? Seems that this kind of thing is hardly unprecedented, and if there's no other evidence...

      That's what I understood was the thinking at the time, there was also the fact that a few of the first reports were clear that it wasn't all the adults that were negatively affected and that the children present were all fine.

    • Re:Psychological then? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Thursday March 02, 2023 @04:35AM (#63334933)

      This honestly is likely to be exactly what it is.

      People fail to understand just how capable people are working themselves into a very sick state from paranoia. Think of all those whackadoodles on social media claiming they've had all sorts of sicknesses from vaccines, and overwhelmingly the symptoms are almost *always* the same symptoms anxiety can cause. In other words they've worked themselves into a paranoic frenzy beccause the red shouting man on TV told them they'll have a heart attack adn bam, cold sweats, fevers, heart palpatations, weird inflamatory symptoms, all the things an excess of andrenaline can cause in people. In Aboriginal Australia they talk of "ponting the bone" where a sorcerer or enemy loreman will point a bone at you, and then sometime soon after you die. And serious scientific minded folks have seen this thing in action. Its pretty obviously not a magic bone, but people so gripped in fear that they are going to die any time now that it induces a cardiac arrest from andrenaline overload. Because yes, you can die of fear, or grief. Its rare, but it happens.

      So you could easily see how this kind of symptom (and honestly many of these symptoms read like extreme anxiety symptoms).

      • This honestly is likely to be exactly what it is.

        It's not a conscious thing but you wouldn't have used the word "honestly" in this context unless you meant the opposite, and just aren't that bright - and you're not.

        Besides, this is the intelligence world; things are never as clear as the liars and dummies like to pretend.

        • I think people watch way too much tv and over inflate capabilities of our foes as well as our own government agencies.

      • People fail to understand just how capable people are working themselves into a very sick state from paranoia. Think of all those whackadoodles on social media claiming they've had all sorts of sicknesses from vaccines, and overwhelmingly the symptoms are almost *always* the same symptoms anxiety can cause.

        People fail to understand just how easy it is to buy into effectively unfalsifiable explanations.

        In Aboriginal Australia they talk of "ponting the bone" where a sorcerer or enemy loreman will point a bone at you, and then sometime soon after you die. And serious scientific minded folks have seen this thing in action. Its pretty obviously not a magic bone, but people so gripped in fear that they are going to die any time now that it induces a cardiac arrest from andrenaline overload. Because yes, you can die of fear, or grief. Its rare, but it happens.

        Is there anything that can't be explained away by nocebo effect? If it can kill you what can't it explain?

        So you could easily see how this kind of symptom (and honestly many of these symptoms read like extreme anxiety symptoms).

        Everything is easy to see, especially when one wants to see it. The truth is sometimes not so easy to discern.

        This honestly is likely to be exactly what it is.

        It's likely to be side effects from a new version of "the thing" version 12.3 caused by adversaries painting spy devices so they can do their thing. This is easy to see.

      • This seems like the most likely answer to me. People don't realize just how many people are affected by medical anxiety.

  • Then it's obviously the work of SPECTRE.

  • Self Inflicted? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @08:45PM (#63334387) Journal
    One of the most plausible explanations has been malfunctioning eavesdropping countermeasure equipment. Think really fancy noise-cancelling headphones, in reverse. However, when the device malfunctioned, the resulting feedback would result in "Havana Syndrome." The call of the Indies Short Tailed Cricket may have triggered at least one of these events.

    I notice the wording of this news is careful not to exclude this explanation.

    • Re:Self Inflicted? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Wednesday March 01, 2023 @11:01PM (#63334607) Journal

      All throughout history, G-men have been exposed negligently, or even purposefully, to all kinds of damaging chemicals and energies. Nuclear weapons tests. Agent Orange. Burn pits. The government's reaction is always denial of the problem, and especially denial that they caused the problem.

      But it's always helpful to look at motives with these kind of public releases of intelligence information. They're not obliged to tell us anything, so whatever they do tell us is for a reason.

      (1) If it was their own equipment, of course they won't say that. It looks bad on them. It opens the door to lawsuits.

      (2) If it was an intentional foreign attack, there are reasons not to admit that either. Then it looks like they don't have control over the situation. It looks like they are at the mercy of an adversary's mystery tech.

      (3) They're also careful not to say "All our staff made it up, they're all hallucinating". That pisses off your staff unnecessarily.

      So when they tell us they have no Earthly idea what happened, it doesn't preclude any of these possibilities. But I do have to agree that of all these scenarios, (1) seems the most mundane and the most likely.

  • ulttrasound from rodent/bug repellerrs?

    Most of the locations are in warmer climates that have serious pest issues.

  • It's caused by covid vaccines, or maybe 5G.

  • "judge that there is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or collection device that is causing AHIs"

    So it could be domestic or from an ally. Further, if they found the cause of 'Havana Syndrome" there is no anomaly.

  • This was known ages ago.

    I don't know why this story is still a story.

  • If there were suspicious "balloons" nearby, maybe they were impregnated by extraterrestrials! Or the Chinese!
  • Well that 10% sure is paying dividends every day.

  • Maybe it was a domestic experiment?
    Conducted by the very agencies investigating it?
    Or perhaps something further afield.

    ...probably the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary, such as preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors," the report reads.

    In other words, it was Venus.

    "Your scientific illiteracy makes me shudder, and I wouldn't flaunt your ignorance by telling anyone that you felt anything that day other than the planet Venus, because if you do, you're a dead man."

  • From the beginning it was the most obvious case of hypochondria and mass delusion ever.

    Just imagine the supposed conspiracy: "With this EvilRayTM we will make the yanks experience slight discomfort, muhahahahaa!"

  • "judge that there is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or collection device that is causing AHIs"

    "In light of this and the evidence that points away from a foreign adversary, causal mechanism or unique syndrome linked to AHIs, IC agencies assess that symptoms reported by US personnel were probably the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary, such as preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors"

    "Three agencies have "high confidence" in

  • Wasn't there a news story some months back, that housekeeping (hired locally) was using disinfectant and cleaning products that left fumes... and, of course, like all modern office building, there are zero openable windows....

  • This is mass hysteria, much like cops suffering drug overdoses from looking at a packet of fentanyl.

  • I watched interviews with some of the folks. I'd be really surprised if it was anything other than that.

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