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CIA Director 'Fuming' After Havana Syndrome Strikes Team Member In India (arstechnica.com) 108

Posted by BeauHD from the mysterious-health-incidents dept.
FallOutBoyTonto shares a report from Ars Technica: A US intelligence officer traveling in India earlier this month with CIA director William Burns reported experiencing a mysterious health incident and symptoms consistent with so-called Havana syndrome, according to a report by CNN. The officer received immediate medical care upon returning to the US. The case raises fears that such incidents are not only increasing, but potentially escalating, unnamed officials told CNN and The New York Times. The new incident within Burns' own team reportedly left the CIA chief "fuming" with anger.

The director's schedule is tightly guarded, and officials do not know if the affected intelligence officer was targeted because the officer was traveling with the director. If the health incident was an attack carried out by an adversarial intelligence agency -- as feared -- it's unclear how the adversarial agency learned of the trip and was able to prepare an attack. It's also possible, however, that the officer was targeted for other reasons and without knowledge that the officer was traveling with the director. The report notes that this incident is the second high-profile case in less than a month. "On August 24, another so-called 'anomalous health incident' affecting US embassy staff in Hanoi, Vietnam, came to light," reports Ars Technica. "It is still unclear how many staff members were affected in that incident, but NBC News reported that two US personnel were medevaced out of the country."
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CIA Director 'Fuming' After Havana Syndrome Strikes Team Member In India More

CIA Director 'Fuming' After Havana Syndrome Strikes Team Member In India

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  • Poor Engineering (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian.bixby@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @06:09PM (#61818897)

    These seem to be the result of multiple ultrasonic devices all installed in the same room and setting up resonances.

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/fina... [ieee.org]

    Of course they were informed of this years ago, but being spooks they'll always default to the assumption that they're under attack by some evil foreign power rather than their own equipment.

    • Maybe its a Microwave Oven Blaster. They used to sell those plans on Paladin Press back in the 80s.

    • I wonder why our intelligence agencies aren't building devices that record data on microwave and ultrasound energy and dump that data regularly e.g. over bluetooth to a phone app that securely uploads it. It could be used to protect people in near-real-time and to confirm/disprove the theories.

      • Who says they aren't?

        Such a device that would work over a wide frequency spectrum is difficult to make small enough to be portable and have usable battery life.

        • Well if they had built and deployed them then this incident wouldn't still be a guessing game, for one..

          • You said phone and Bluetooth, that implies something portable and discreet enough to carry around as an individual. Did you miss my response about the technical limitations in producing said device? Google software radios. It's an exceptionally hard problem constrained by technology.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        Agree, and the random nature of the attacks makes no sense what-so-ever, there's no apparent motive here, unless some country has completely lost their marbles and wants a direct war with the US which is unlikely.

        The global nature of these attacks is very odd, starting in 'enemy' Cuba but then happening in allied countries. Doesn't add up.

    • Re:Poor Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jythie ( 914043 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @06:29PM (#61818961)
      Eh, that piece seemed REALLY speculative, and responding to speculation. All they really did was show that a partial tone that people reported hearing and got a recording of could potentially be explained if two particular pieces of equipment were in the same room and interfering with each other. Since I doubt the single sample is even all that broad (thus missing any additional information outside the narrow range of the microphone), concluding what caused it is pretty sketchy.
      • They problem is that their ultrasonic counter espionage devices interfere with the microchips they injected into everyone's brain via the vaccine. (how's that speculation for you) lol

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        At a very minimum, an ultrasonic weapon is improbable at best, and impossible to use through solid concrete walls anyway, which is where most of these people are working. The spooks have never come up with any sort of method that could be used to deploy the thing, nor explain how it is supposed to go through walls, much less any reason for using it other than "they're the bad guys!" That it was encountered at a high end hotel in Switzerland that caters to corporate executives as well makes any sort of wea

    • Microwaves, not ultrasonics.

    • Spooks being spooks, I assume that what they say will be designed to not give away what they know, or at times, to misinform about what they know.

    • Close, but no cigar. Here is the correct one

      These seem to result from multiple USA ultrasonic and electronic devices.

      To put it bluntly USA own electronic (against radio snooping) and ultrasonic (shaking windows against reading them with laser for snooping) measures are frying the brains of its own diplomats. That is the only plausible explanation - it ALWAYS happens at a USA (and only USA, no allies) diplomatic station; it happens in all kind of locations around the globe and it happened in at least two

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        multiple USA ultrasonic and electronic devices.

        Yes, that's what the article concludes, maybe I wasn't clear. You should read through it, it's quite interesting.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        electronic (against radio snooping) and ultrasonic (shaking windows against reading them with laser for snooping) measures are frying the brains of its own diplomats

        Maybe, maybe not. It seem at least plausible enough that they should be doing a study.

        The use of Ultrasonic audio emissions sound especially dubious and should be investigated in its actual implementation to verify it's actually safe and presents no affect on humans' hearing or other harmful health concerns; if it could have, there ought to

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by LKM ( 227954 )
      In my opinion, the most likely explanation for this is still stress-induced mass hysteria. The symptoms these people have are too non-specific, and the people affected are too unrelated to each other. It's like the dancing plagues of the past: there probably wasn't any specific physical thing triggering it, just bad conditions overall which cause a sense of malaise, combined with high stress, and then some kind of trigger that causes people to emotionally infect each other with this idea of a secret weapon
    • The Spectrum article puts forth a plausible hypothesis for a sound associated with one attack. It by no means identifies an underlying source. And, for some of the attacks, like the person walking their dog outside, the "multiple ultrasonic devices in the same room" hypothesis is implausible.

      It could be poor engineering of oscillators in their 5G implants though! :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Makes sense to me. Also, spooks are not the most scientific or connected to reality people.

  • Hasn't this already been explained? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BardBollocks ( 1231500 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @06:11PM (#61818905)

    When this first occurred in Cuba it was determined to have been caused by an interaction of anti-surveillance tech implemented by the Embassy themselves.

    I'd have to ask why this is 'News' any more.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      You posted just after I posted the link to the 2018 IEEE article, which is just above yours.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fustakrakich ( 1673220 )

      I'd have to ask why this is 'News' any more.

      *Crickets* [phys.org]

    • Because that doesn't get people riled up for a war with China or Russia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Reading the piece, it more looks like the staff got a single narrow band sample that showed a particular tone, and some engineers worked out that you could produce such a tone if you had two pieces of equipment each producing a particular tone and interfering. The sample was not broad enough to indicate if there was additional information outside of it (since the frequency it did capture obviously did not cause the problem), and they have no indication such equipment is even present... so it is either a si
    • If that were true then POTUS would be sick as shit. Can you imagine any place with more anti-surveillance than the oval office and the war room?

    • When this first occurred in Cuba it was determined to have been caused by an interaction of anti-surveillance tech implemented by the Embassy themselves.

      I'd have to ask why this is 'News' any more.

      That is one theory of many. If there is any particularly strong evidence for any of the many theories regarding Havana Syndrome, the intelligence community isn't releasing it to the public.

      Regardless of which theory is correct, this is "news" because it keeps happening, which is concerning. For example, if this is a surveillance device overlapping with an anti-surveillance device, why has the country responsible for the surveillance device not changed its frequency to better avoid detection? That they spy s

  • Why hasn't the US cracked this case yet? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speterNO@SPAMtedata.net.eg> on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @06:12PM (#61818907) Journal

    I think the most problematic aspect of this case is that the United States hasn't solved it for four years. They're supposed to be global leaders in this type of weaponry. It's an utter embarrassment that it's still a mystery.

    I'm leaning towards microwave, but I don't understand why every intelligence service isn't yet equipped with a broad-range spectrum analyzer for such an event. These events seem to parallel what we've heard was developed with Raytheon's Active Denial System [wikipedia.org], a high-tech weapon that was scrapped by the United States military after, shocker, they found out that you can't ask the enemy to stay still long enough to blast them with microwaves.

    But if someone doesn't -know- they're being blasted, and the pulse is modulated to a low enough burst to be tolerated and endurable but with all the amazing side effects of long-term microwave radiation exposure [biomedcentral.com], and it seems we have a plausible theory to roll with.

    • Re:Why hasn't the US cracked this case yet? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @06:17PM (#61818933)
      probably because they are focused on potential malicious external forces and weapons rather than looking for the more obvious and simple answers which revolve around the massive amount of tech and devices they use in embassies.

    • Re:Why hasn't the US cracked this case yet? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian.bixby@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @06:24PM (#61818951)

      Electrical engineers figured it out shortly after it was first reported, but no one listens to them because spooks are spooks and diplomats are diplomats and none of them talk to us nerds. I posted a link to an IEEE article explaining the likely cause higher in the thread, probably just before you clicked Submit.

      I've personally encountered a similar phenomenon locally. We were working on the new building at the Coast Guard base installing security equipment and a certain glass break detector kept going off during the day for no reason. The things work by listening for the frequency of the sound made by breaking glass. We replaced the detector twice, and there were still dozens of alarms a day. Finally I was there with the tech to replace it a third time and from the top of the ladder he said, "Hey, I hear it!" What? He had me climb to the top of the ladder and put my head near the detector, and sure enough there was a sharp high pitched noise. Something about the acoustics of the room and the various pieces of equipment in it, and possibly the AC system, focused the sound at that point. We moved the detector two ceiling tiles over and the problem disappeared.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Modded -1 now? My stalker seems to have gotten mod points again.

        • I read the article and it emphasized the point that they did not figure it out. They just demonstrated one possibility and they didn't even test to see if their possibility could replicate Havana Syndrome (which, admittedly, would be difficult and probably require some ethically dubious tests on animals).

          The article you cited presented a plausible theory. It did not provide enough evidence to assume that theory is correct. I have yet to read anything that provides strong evidence for any particular theory,

        • Don't take it personally, 2nd World folks have been getting mod points and using them. Any story that implicates Russia or China will be full of weird mods.

      • Thanks for sharing (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speterNO@SPAMtedata.net.eg> on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @07:59PM (#61819203) Journal

        I read the IEEE article. Very insightful. I'm surprised that I didn't hear this theory before.

        To add insight to this theory so that it can approach credibility... My cousin was formerly a building consultant who worked on many building projects worth over $100 million, some of them federal buildings. I remember him telling me one story about how one federal government project in Hawaii for the navy had an extensive listing of classified components in its RFP. Each was a non-negotiable requirement, and had a very generic line item description with estimated cost. He said each of these classified line items (CLI's, he called them...I think it was an internal acronym) was installed by a classified contractor who would show up on site and be supervised by a federal employee. No one else was permitted to be there during installation. When installation was finished, my cousin was -sometimes- provided declassified installation notes (after installation, if ever) that were only to be used by the building contractor and his firm to determine any project adjustments that would need to be made to compensate for the equipment.

        He said this was one reason why federal buildings were so expensive to build; contractors would inflate their cost projections by 50% or more to compensate for lost revenue resulting from the many project adjustments that would result from these CLIs. (The other reason why they're so expensive is because so few contractors are willing to bid on them. My cousin's firm hated federal projects and rarely bid on them.)

        So who knows what radioactive soup is brewing inside those buildings. Not even the building contractors know what all has been installed in them.

    • Because most operatives are disguised as lowly workerbees at embassies or as journalists. They cant be seen with a suite of RF sensors.
    • There are specialized personnel who use spectrum analyzer based devices to look for RF bugs. Aside from this, it should be fairly easy to make a low cost detection circuit for pulsed microwaves -a wideband diode detector and audio amp/comparator should do the job.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Actually they do sweep for microwaves, for a couple of reasons. One was this thing:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        They've also found that window glass vibrates with the sound occurring inside the room, and microwaves aimed at the glass can measure and decode those vibrations (to an extent). This is why all modern embassy buildings have triple pane windows, to attenuate that signal, and probably why the US embassy in Moscow was being irradiated with microwaves during the late-'70s and early-'80s.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Because it's difficult, that's why.

      A number of years ago, there was a meme going around about random beeps that happened for a split second every few minutes. It beeps for maybe 200 milliseconds, then waits anywhere from 1 minute to 10 minutes before repeating.

      This was highly annoying, and many old-timey cellphones did that when their battery was low. The problem was the duration was so short it precluded any form of localization, and the duration between beeps so long, the user would give up the search bef

  • Clearly this must be from cell phones.. perhaps they were using them too much? or perhaps they have microcell antennas (or something like that) too close to humans at the places where these people were?

    directed pulsed radiofrequency energy was the "most plausible" cause of the incidents and injuries. Russian scientists have a long history of researching related technology and its effects on people. Russian authorities have reportedly denied any involvement in the incidents.

  • It would be Facebook/Google/Apple/TikTok/Alibaba/Bing...

  • Can't they watch it happening? (Score:3)

    by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Tuesday September 21, 2021 @07:33PM (#61819147) Journal

    I watched a guy from Philip Morris scan all the radio frequencies from DC to daylight with a Tektronix spectrum analyzer, looking for bugs in a Blair House conference room during (probably) the Bush 41 administration in the late 80s/early 90s (I was a lowly A/V geek at the time, and am fuzzy on the date of my memory).

    I figure the CIA's capabilities were and are much better than that then and even better now (though they're not really the SIGINT guys). Why can't they detect this while it's going down, if it's not a pathogen thing?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flink ( 18449 )

      My guess is because it's a peculiar kind of mass hysteria.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Phillip Morris? The tobacco company? I would love to know why.

      • Yes, those guys, before they became Altria.

        Why? I can't presume to know their minds, but whatever somebody picked up at a meeting of Philip Morris with some government person on the White House...uh...campus, I guess, would be newsworthy, and of interest to competitors.

        IIRC the legal actions that pretty much shut down tobacco advertising and directed bux to anti-smoking measures occurred in the Clinton years. I assume big Tobacco was trying to preemptively wiggle out of whatever.

    • Why is a guy from a cigarette company doing spectrum analysis?

    • Flogging my memory, and trying to find pictures of the place to recapture the experience, I think the interior of the Decatur Carriage House, not Blair House (about a 3 minute walk away) better matches my memory of the exterior and interior of the venue for the meeting.

      A little less prestigious than the official ambassadorial guest residence, but better appointed for a fair-to-middlin' crowd at a meeting. Still, one can bet they didn't pick the venue for its convenience to Richmond.

      Rest of the story is as I

  • vaccination. :-)

  • Some guy who was going somewhere to do some shady shit had some shady shit done to him? Wow, really terrible.

    And it was done while he was travelling with the King of shadiness? Really really shocking I can't believe anyone would do something like this we should undertake a covert campaign to destabilize their government.
  • I've been getting brutal attacks like this all of my life, people in the scientific community are constantly ignored. It's often covered up with drugs or other nonsense, the US's policy towards the war on drugs in Afghanistan clearly points to this. It's disgusting the amount of ignorance around such weaponry when it's in the news constantly dating back to WWII. If you're hearing a high pitch tinnitus sound that sounds like a CRT television, you're probably a victim of these weapons. Here's just a sample:

  • I haven't heard of agents of other countries being a victim to that thing.
    surely, if it was the russians or something, it would have an impact on other coutries as well, not just the US...
    how about the actual cause would be something inside de US embassy, say, a transmitter of some kind used to spy on others ?

  • Where's the EEG recording on this?

    If there isn't, then: https://spectrum.ieee.org/fina... [ieee.org]

  • There is no evidence that this is a real syndrome. As a neurologist, I thought the symptoms are all non-specific and consistent with migraine. Episodes can be triggered by environmental exposures, and often is associated with (pre-existing) MRI abnormalities. Thereâ(TM)s no smoking gun here.
  • You should search "peep" and microwave torture in Stratfor emails. Explains why CIA linked individuals are targeted, I'm guessing.

  • If you didn't already I suggest reading the excellent book "The Chain of Chance" by Stanislaw Lem. (The German title is Der Schnupfen“ which does give less away.)

    Spoilers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

  • Put tinfoil up on the walls of half the rooms/sections to make a faraday cage. Monitor to see if it makes any difference.

    Personally I think it is psychogenic [wikipedia.org] and if people in the screened rooms also suffer from it then you have your answer.

  • Can't be so hard to figure out what causes it, or can it?

    Microphones, with variations in sensibility if they must, could record every sound (in case one suspects infra or ultra sound).

    Same for antennas receiving and recording every EM emissions of you think it is microwaves or some other odd spectrum.

    What else besides poison could it be?

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