I looked at the two patents Mr. Broad referenced and was pleasantly surprised that both patents mentioned Dr. Andrija Puharich in the References section. If you read last year's book by Annie Jacobsen, "Phenomena", you'll notice she devotes a large portion of the book to Dr. Puharich. His RF hearing research was based on applying the signal directly to the skin of the subject, as was the work by G. Patrick Flanagan. It appears the Air Force researchers used their work on AM modulation and speech waveform processing for a completely contact-free application using microwaves.
4
Until clear evidence can be provided that microwaves damaged the brain in specific fashion anything is possible.
1
with the loss of numerous operatives in china, this 'noise' issue could be a clever way to extract 'merican personell from other countries before they become unusually missing AND point the finger at someone else.
It's obvious some people are itching to blame Cuba, among them despicable Marco Rubio and associates, but Cuba would be the one truly hurt by this incident, as the restauration of diplomatic ties between the US and Cuba had been considered a triumph for Cuban diplomacy, crowned by Obama's visit to Havana. And then these incidents. Those who never accepted this change, some key figures in the US, want to punish Cuba and there are some who are salivating about a possible invasion, blockade or some other aggressive act. Yes, there are people with that mentality in and around high places in the US. Mr. Trump took a very aggressive attitude towards Cuba, encouraged by Rubio and a handful of Cuban-Americans who long for US imperialist action in Cuba, Latin America and the world. The best course of action is serious cooperation between the US and Cuba regarding this issue. Not threats, not sanctions, but talks. If anyone gains anything from a possible deterioration in relations between the US and Cuba, it would be Russia. That is as clear as water. We need to use our diplomacy and be smart when it comes to this, almost science fiction, incident.
10
Given the long history, and given the advanced technologies of today, especially advanced software for automating and accelerating research, (which the American Public should put 2+2 together concerning, and thereby to assume that the U.S. Gov't, but also by now probably a number of science capable nations, has/have acquired their own 'R+D' knowledge about what happens when electromagnetic waves forms, and ultrasonic wave forms, of all sorts, are aimed at the human body, and about signals response dynamics upon a particular human's body):|
Should the Public be more upset that U.S. Gov't employees are being harmed but the U.S. Govt's knowledge and capabilities are somehow 'deficient' to not adequately detect the signals and to fully understand what is going on [physically: types of signals, and fully known? and researched types of harms]?
Or, alternatively, should the Public be more upset that our U.S. Gov't refuses to use its science and technology resources to more skillfully and rapidly detect an alleged instance [ every employee should by now have a 'possible attack' secure communications 'help me button' ], and to more successfully mitigate the physical harms against individual employees.
Sad state of affairs where even the basic knowledge is kept from the Public; can't even hear a clear, basic truth complaint filed diplomatically.
Let's just hope that there isn't a world-wide 'mind control war' upon large populations going on, with as much non-disclosure.
4
The truly astonishing thing is that investigation persevered through the intellectually lazy insistence that the entire episode was conveniently psychogenic, “hysteria”. Wow.
9
There is no solid proof of this attack but its possible to make a small directional microwave device with nominal electronics skills. Not big enough to be fatal or cause overt injury, but enough to likely cause a reduction in cognitive abilities difficult to detect.
During negotiations having your rival loose 10% of his cognitive marbles would be a big advantage.
5
whether it is sound or electromagnetic microwave, there is a way in place to detect, measure and monitor. I can't believe there is no substantial evidence other than some circumstantial baloney. I don't buy those so-called "experts"
4
Cuba was punished after these mysterious attacks. Was there any retaliatory action taken against China? Any notes of protest etc?
5
10 Canadian embassy diplomats in Havana experienced the same symptoms / were attached in the same way in 2017-2018. See: https://globalnews.ca/news/4148090/canadian-embassy-cuba-dangerous-unexp...
10
This article is clearly unscientific and under strong biases. There's not a single proof of where, how and from this «noises» come. Diplomatic personal particularly the families described here as subject to deadly malignant «sound attack» are by no means the enemy by any power in the world. The contrary is closer to the truth. In U.S. there's apparently the clear «mission» to declare «enemies» Russians, Iranians, Chinese, Cubans. This article could be described as being under the typical C.I.A. undercover. It's amusing to realize that there's no military targets, just female secretaries, aunts and wives of diplomats, etc. Give me a break... The NYT could be more serious.
4
Itis with some regre and sorrow that I must say that the meal colander and aluminum hat gang were right all along. Some one, or some thing.
, is beaming radio waves into the heads of unsuspecting citizens.
There is some record that among those who study the field of the UFO issue that micro waves were important in the phenomena
Especially in the area of paralysis of the voluntary muscle control system. Stop opponents without killing them Great, also for civil unrest.
3
The hearing voices movement has its international event, the 10th Annual World Hearing Voices Congress, coming up this month. Within this movement, which advocates a nonjudgmental, participant-centered approach, I have advocated taking seriously notions that some voice-hearing and other odd perceptual experiences are scientifically explainable communications rather than hallucinations or spiritual phenomena. Moreover, I am not convinced despite this article that internal devices or chips that are not actual legitimate medical devices are not another possible scientific explanation for some such experiences. The Times itself has carried article on possible "hacks" of pacemakers, etc. as a next frontier. Thank you, NTY for your excellent coverage.
6
In the mid-1960s Lawrence Labs in California knew about this technology. My father came home from work at Lawrence one day, clearly shaken, and told me quietly that one of his co-owrkers died from being hit with microwaves. He never spoke of it again. Anyone familiar with the other experimental programs of that period, MKUltra for example, should not be surprised by anything about this "new" weapon except that it's taken this long to hit the news. There are a lot of things that could explain "disturbing sounds" but not accompanied by actual brain damage, as this was. Anyone using the term "mass hysteria" to describe this incident should probably retire. Tin-foil hats were ahead of their time.
18
@Januarium the military/civil agencies have radar antennas that will cause personell injury if they get into the direct path of the radiated emissions. even ham radio operators know this with power levels below 1 kilowatt, one can feel the warmth as the cells absorb the energy. cubans are not all ignorant farm workers much as the propoganda presents them, but an entire educated class with enough access to weapons, methods and desire to act like foreign intruders themselves. there's a vast gap between having ready to shoot nuke missiles to fire off and simple low energy devices to annoy, upset and expell diplomats (and their love mates).
1
It's revenge time. We will need to broadcast Slim Whitman over the skies of Cuba.
5
There are simple physical reasons why microwave radiation is virtually harmless to biological beings ( unless really high intensity source is used and we have a simple heating of the object as in a microwave oven). Microwave radiation quants are too low in energy to effect chemical reactions that are the basis of biological processes. Thousands of researches for many decades are trying to find some solid evidence of a harm from microwave radiation but somehow we are using wireless devices more and more without a detriment. And where is our all-knowing special services. Somehow they know the names of Russian officers who have stolen Democratic Party files but have no idea (for many years) about some very sinister device that is regularly used against US diplomatic missions all over the world..... NYT is considered be a respectable source of information. It is very sad that they contribute to these paranoid stories. Highly paranoid superpower with scientifically ignorant political elite but thousands of nuclear bombs - this is indeed a really scary story.
4
So in the early 60s at the height of the cold war Mr. Frey publishes his discovery with its obvious weapon potential and then, "was invited by the Soviet Academy of Sciences to visit and lecture"... which he did. How in the world was that allowed to happen?
12
"He speculated that Cubans aligned with Russia, the nation’s longtime ally, might have launched microwave strikes in attempts to undermine developing ties between Cuba and the United States.... It’s a possibility...I think that’s a perfectly viable explanation.”
He should stick to science.
Highly unlikely that rogue Cubans did it. Raul and Cubans were happy about ending the embargo and warming US relations. They invited US scientists to investigate.
More likely Russians did it It's influence has cooled for decades. Has he ever seen the Russian embassy in Cuba? It's a sword like tower topped with multiple antennae.
3
I think most persons who have witnessed what has been going on with the Russians and the 2016 election would not be surprised it could commence a new round of militancy from Russia towards the USA in the form of these attacks.
1
Other Potential medical effecr: In 1960 I conducted a Biology Project for our H.S. Science Fair. I subjected 8 drosophila (fruit flies) to ex-rays (partnering with my Grandfather's company's technicians). I then studied the offspring.... and their horrifying mutations over multiple generations. I won first prize for the 9th grade. The other aspect of this experimental research, beyond the powerful force is the effect of TIME.
2
Years ago movies and TV films showed death rays at work, destroying military aircraft. Now they're here, destroying people's minds. Another plus for scifi, another minus for mankind,
4
About half of existing cases of schizophrenia are the result of this type of weaponry. It is not new weaponry, rather it has been employed since the 1940s and 1950s with increasing sophistication.
1
Immediate thought: all embassy workers should place a chocolate bar in their pocket. If it starts melting, immediately leave the building.
2
Talk to this guy....Woody Norris, he was the winner of the 2005 Lemelson-MIT Prize for his invention of a "hypersonic sound" system which allows sound to be focused with high precision.
He gave a presentation at a TED Talks 2004 "Hypersonic Sound and other Inventions."
Woody Norris shows off two of his inventions that use sound in new ways, including the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD. In his presentation of the HSS he states: "We've got the military -- have just deployed some of these into Iraq, where you can put fake troop movements quarter of a mile away on a hillside. (Laughter) Or you can whisper in the ear of a supposed terrorist some Biblical verse. (Laughter) I'm serious. And they have these infrared devices that can look at their countenance, and see a fraction of a degree Kelvin in temperature shift from 100 yards away when they play this thing. And so, another way of hopefully determining who's friendly and who isn't. We make a version with this which puts out 155 decibels. Pain is 120. So it allows you to go nearly a mile away and communicate with people, and there can be a public beach just off to the side, and they don't even know it's turned on. We sell those to the military presently for about 70,000 dollars, and they're buying them as fast as we can make them. We put it on a turret with a camera, so that when they shoot at you, you're over there, and it's there."
5
@Katheryn only $70K each, wow. what a bargain! better get ready for the chinese to start mass production, could drop the price down to close to cost of the parts, $1000.....
have to enjoy the 'end user' sales pitch, make me feel real safer knowing how it could be used right next door to me...
1
One thing is certain, the only correct move was to double down on Cuba, not retreat, as hoped by perpetrators. They accomplished their mission.
1
Short term, can’t they use something like a radar detector to warn them when they’re under attack. Then wear a helmet with material used in microwave ovens to stop radiation?
2
Most of the testing was done more than six (6) months after the event(s). According to Swanson et al. (2018): "Multidisciplinary evaluations began an average of 203 days..."
The 'microwave phenomena' occurred at home, and not at the U.S. Embassy. According to Swanson et al. (2018): "For 18 of the 21 individuals (86%), there were reports of hearing a novel, localized sound at the onset of symptoms in their homes and hotel rooms (Table 2)." "Some patients were awakened by sounds and were unsure of the start of the event."
Among other things, eTable 1 shows that 48% wanted to change locations (postings to Cuba) after experiencing the phenomena.
There was subtle changes in their performance at work. According to Swanson et al. (2018): "For at least 6 individuals (29%), a clear change in work performance was noted by supervisors and colleagues (eTable 1 in the Supplement)."
There were no physical changes to their brain that could be detected with an MRI. According to Swanson et al. (2018): "The pattern of conventional imaging findings in these cases was nonspecific with regard to the exposure/insult experienced, and the findings could perhaps be attributed to other preexisting disease processes or risk factors."
Cite:
Swanson, Randel L. II, DO, PhD; Stephen Hampton, MD; Judith Green-McKenzie, MD, MPH2; et al. Neurological Manifestations Among US Government Personnel Reporting Directional Audible and Sensory Phenomena in Havana, Cuba. JAMA, 20 MAR 2018.
2
@W,
perhaps they should have looked for antenna dishes under their beds.
This article would have been more complete and accurate if it had mentioned the important work of scientists at the University of Michigan, who found (in their March paper) that “…acoustic interference without malicious intent to cause harm could have led to the audible sensations in Cuba.” (Paper: "On Cuba, Diplomats, Ultrasound, and Intermodulation Distortion.")
The Michigan team, which studied audio recordings of these mysterious sounds obtained by the Associated Press, suggested the incidents may have been the unintended side-effects of “intermodulation distortion” that occurs as a result of the interference of two or more ultrasonic transmission signals. They describe how such an effect could have been caused by the interference of, say, Cuban eavesdropping equipment with American counter-surveillance jamming technology or vice versa.
As Broad writes here, “The microwave idea teems with unanswered questions.” In fact, there is even less evidence of – or logic to – the microwave idea than of the intermodulation distortion hypothesis. Last October Michael Weissenstein, Josh Lederman, and Matt Lee of the Associated Press reported that “[U.S.] intelligence operatives [were] among the first and most severely affected victims,” which lends still more creditability to the intermodulation distortion hypothesis. (AP News, "AP sources: US spies in Havana hit by bizarre health attacks," October 2, 2017.)
3
A very thorough review of the effects of microwaves on humans and animals has been posted at http://www.scribd.com/doc/45663757/Biological-Effects-of-Microwaves-Ther...
This paper was posted originally about 15 years ago and has been updated to current times:
Abstract (partial):
For over sixty years, it has been reported that microwave electromagnetic radiation (EMR) had effects on humans which could not be explained by detectible heating of tissue. Auditory responses to radar, called microwave hearing, have been the best known of these phenomena.
Many studies in the literature have adopted a rate-of-heating hypothesis advanced by Foster and Finch in 1974. We show here that theoretical and experimental studies supporting this hypothesis are weaker than usually assumed.
EMR, especially wide-band EMR, primarily must have a nonthermal effect on living tissue before conversion to heat. Auditory and tactile sensations, central neurological disability, and blood pressure loss caused by EMR have been documented.
3
This did affect the US Embassy alone! How can this article fail to mention Canadians in Cuba were also targeted! https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-cuba/canada-pulls-families-of-...
1
Those who feel that they are victims of microwave attacks should get a dosimeter.
1
Think carefully folks. These attacks are certainly microwave attacks, and I am so certain because of things to lengthy for this space to discuss. The most likely perp is THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ITSELF. Even if it was Russian agents and Russian equipment, this administration is in collusion with them. The end game is very near, let's make it Trumps end, you know he would do this or anything to anyone if it served his needs, and it would be as decitful as possible.
Fifth-six years later, The Cuban Microwave Crisis...
I think the reported power level necessary to produce this effect may be misleading, and a correction may be necessary. Frey’s original article reports that the effect is observed at power densities 160 times lower than the maximum safe level, but he was using *pulsed* sources with duty cycles between 0.0004 and 0.0015, and reported detection thresholds in *average power*. The *peak power* would have been 670–2,500 larger than the average power, or 4–15 times the “maximum safe level for continuous exposure.” The words are taken from the original article, but they nonetheless appear to be misleading and should not be repeated uncritically in the NYT article (unless I’m wrong, of course).
3
If my memory serves me well, (if there’s any gray matter left up there), it is “S” band (frequency) that warms your Hot-Pockets microwave treats and essentially cooks your goose. I had a boss at Stanford linear Accelerator center (SLAC), that in his early days at Raytheon, they used to put balls of steel wool (iron actually) in front of a test waveguide, and essentially vaporize ‘em . What I’m wondering is with these third world countries, where are they generating all the power to power these surreptitiously used electromagnetic (em) weapons. As a sidenote, when I lived in Palo Alto and after I worked at Varian microwave (basically the inventor of the magnetron?), and I used to “hear” “pulsing“ noises .... Routine, spaced approximately five seconds apart, although I attributed it to the “sound” of The modulators or test stations pulse testing some military tubes that they were manufacturing or prototyping. Never thought about it much after that till now. This is all fascinating to me in a sense because yesterday knowledge and valves the industry are used to work in.!
2
This article plays to Cold War paranoia and skirts over the most likely responsible phenomenon, which is mass psychogenic illness. This is a much misunderstood disease, which is very common. Humans are highly inclined to adopt the symptoms and mannerisms of their neighbors in close distances. The investigators of the University of Pennsylvania should have considered more seriously this hypothesis.
The account is so full of holes. A microwave weapon supposedly "bathed" the American embassy, yet somehow did not injure one-half of the personnel, nor the Cuban employees on staff. How such microwaves somehow went through layers of concrete, glass, and other building materials of the embassy, homes, and hotels at some distance away, "targeted" American and Canadian employees--and not anyone else--strains credulity. More science needed!
3
The JAMA study presumed a physical cause (acquired brain injury), but did not consider that the sound phenomena may have been introduced purely for its psychological effect (say, to make the people think that they had been subjected to mind control).
This may sound like the plot from the original Mission Impossible TV series, but this is known as a milieu control regime in the U.S. Defense Industry (among signals intelligence people). It can be described as the original Brainwashing technique as employed by the Red Chinese and North Koreans in the 1950's, except that it is implemented in the subject's natural environment (home, going to work, at work, etc.). These people would have been subjected, two (2) or more times a day, to covert symbolic communication (e.g. pantomime or charades type activity by a second party), that produces a series of 'lessons' to be learned. Each lesson takes about two (2) weeks in the U.S. Defense Industry. These are real activities, and are not delusions.
The purpose of a milieu control regime is to manipulate someone, to elicit information, or to train them (as in the case of advanced signals intelligence training). The process can lead to P.T.S.D type symptoms, but these will be somewhat different because the stress is socially induced, rather than from a dramatic incident (such as an assault).
Professional people are reticent to discuss these activities, as they fear they will be regarded as mentally ill.
4
Time to rethink tinfoil?
Are there any at home ad hoc protective measures?
2
Hopefully this article will raise awareness on the effects wireless does to us. Big tech constantly pushing for more all in the name of convenience and necessity. Uniformed people accepting it and using it not realizing the consequences. The result, millions of people and wildlife being affected from the soup we are bathing in. Wake up folks. There are safer alternatives to wireless!
4
So, when we watch a sporting event and and see a few bizarre blunders, we must process the notion that, perhaps, a mad scientist type has put a "beam" on the players, messing up their minds.
1
Microwaves suspected in these attacks are the very same type of emissions used in wireless devices like cell phones, cell towers, wifi, smart meters. And for decades the same health problems have been studied and reported, with symptoms ranging from headaches and dizziness to palpitations and tachycardia, to DNA damage and cancer. Scientists in government and industry have known about these dangers for decades yet this technology has been allowed to increase the level of electromagnetic radiation in our environment without any limits. Children are especially vulnerable yet are sitting in a sea of microwave radiation in their wifi-filled school rooms each day. Hopefully this article and others will bring this issue to the public's attention because so far the telecom's deep pockets have resulted in silence by our governments.
7
I have to believe that State Dept. technicians are constantly monitoring the electromagnetic environment at embassies for security purposes. If so, the level of microwave energy needed for such an "attack" would probably saturate their instrumentation and immediately alert them. These data must exist somewhere.
4
Do microwaves leave any artifact like re-alignment of atoms in soft or thin materials like glass that might provide evidence of prior powerful microwave usage?
2
These were also used in the VietNam War. I know a Vet that was tasked with releasing the Microwaves.
If it were so simple and the use of microwaves for eavesdropping or as a weapon has been known since the 1960s, why are US diplomatic missions the world over left unprotected against this type of threat?
3
I wonder if this is what happened to Otto Warmbier.
4
@AZYankee The North Koreans say it was a failed suicide attempt.
@AZYankee
Thank you for that pertinent thought!
It appears that the fellow running around with a tinfoil hat may be the most forward thinker of his generation.
19
Interestingly, the most efficient foil (sorry) to directed, focused microwave transmitters is TIN foil (not aluminum foil), like...a tin foil helmet.
I guess it’s just a matter of time before ULINE
offers these to GSA accounts...
3
Nothing new here at all. I was in the US Marines 38 years ago. The Marines who were on embassy duty in Moscow use to joke about glowing in the dark from all the microwaves that were shot into the US embassy. The Russians have been doing this for years. Of course so have we.
17
Given the long history, and given the advanced technologies of today, especially advanced software for automating and accelerating research, (which the American Public should put 2+2 together concerning, and thereby to assume that the U.S. Gov't, but also by now probably a number of science capable nations, has/have acquired their own 'R+D' knowledge about what happens when electromagnetic waves forms, and ultrasonic wave forms, of all sorts, are aimed at the human body, and about signals response dynamics upon a particular human's body):
Should the Public be more upset that U.S. Gov't employees are being harmed but the U.S. Govt's knowledge and capabilities are somehow 'deficient' to not adequately detect the signals and to fully understand what is going on [physically: types of signals, and fully known? and researched types of harms]?
Or, alternatively, should the Public be more upset that our U.S. Gov't refuses to use its science and technology resources to more skillfully and rapidly detect an alleged instance [ every employee should by now have a 'possible attack' secure communications 'help me button' ], and to more successfully mitigate the physical harms against individual employees.
Sad state of affairs where even the basic knowledge is kept from the Public; can't even hear a clear, basic truth complaint filed diplomatically.
Let's just hope that there isn't a world-wide 'mind control war' upon large populations going on, with as much non-disclosure.
OH, OH, OH, SO...it can't be in retaliation for the WAR waged on Cuba by the current US Administration?
1) What are the previous medical history of the personnel before assigned in the subject specific office (building) in China?
2) What is the age of the subject specific building and the construction material used ?
A joint investigation team of China & USA with technical personnel is suggested. Please respond. I would come back with
my constructive suggestions again.
Microwaves, while OK for cooking "dead" food, are problematic for the living. There's a bad joke dating from the early 1970s (when microwave ovens became affordable) about a woman who decided to wash her poodle--and dry him in the microwave. Not smart!
I wonder when people will also discover the mind-numbing effects of conversation-killing loud "music" in restaurants and party venues, "reality" TV, and fact-free internet sites--and re-enter the fact-base world.
3
“Dr. Smith remarked that the diplomats and doctors jokingly refer to the trauma as the immaculate concussion.”
Brain trauma is nothing to joke about.
4
Something tells me that a device like this causes senators to get glioblastoma.
4
First, the Active Denial Technology doesn’t create “sensations” They are real! Would you like the crowd tartare, rare, medium, or well-done?
Of all places Cuba! Need we not forget the Spanish-American War and how the USS Maine’s sinking played into the unfolding of its history. The ship did sink. That was REAL. As to the why’s and the how’s, well, the how’s didn’t suggest serpents of the sea or alien life forms. No, the how’s were derived from the plausible(s). In short, bombs, and espionage. The historical reasons of why the Spanish American War occurred to date definitely lists “contagious anxiety” .
When a bullet is fired of the head of field soldiers. it ain’t that the bullet wasn’t real, but what comes next and why there was a bullet? Knowing microwave weapony involves the technological we can somewhat safely throw the products of microwave weapons on the plane likened to Moore’s Law. I have to wonder how far they have come since the 60’s!
Would you want the government or a mob literally ringing your head , the new way, without proper authorization? It sounds crazy but that’s the bullet we are talking about.
4
Intriuging, what happens in the rest of the body? Is fertility affected? Thyroid? other glands?
Would a tinfoil hat be sufficient to protect or would that intensify if facing the wrong direction?
Too many unaswered questions!
3
This kind of warfare isn’t new. The United States and other sovereign powers have investigated and used these techniques since at least the 1970s. Indeed as early as 1940s Nazi Germany, the ideas of manipulating one’s perceptions of reality have been used to enervate political opponents. Most famously, the East German Stasi are credited with using these techniques (collective called Zersetzung) to persecute enemies of the state. The German film, “Die Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), depicts such techniques and their effects.
Regarding the science of psychological warfare, it’s sound. Pardon the pun, but the Frey effect is a scientific explanation for the workings of just one group of such techniques. Simple starvation is another technique, used individually or collectively (such as in the Siege of Leningrad), to induce a sense of doom and hopeless among enemies. Active Denial System is another microwave weapon used to cause neutralizing pain by warming water in human skin, and sonic non-lethal weaponry such as LRAD is used in both commercial and military sectors to deter threats. As it turns out, threat of death isn’t the only way to bend a knee to another’s will: our common goal of avoiding suffering is a target in and of itself.
6
Good one. Cuba, a country where its citizens barely can afford to eat one square meal a day, some how come to possession of a weapon requiring lots money and resource to develop.
But wait what if some nefarious groups, e.g. Russians, colluded with Cubans. Then it is possible.
There goes another conspiracy theory, except this time propagates by the respectable NYT.
You just have to love how in the first decades of the 21st century so many “paranoid fantasies” of the 20th century have turned out to be true. Yes, you carry a personalized tracking device (not yet implanted but just wait), your stereo system spies on you and governments beam microwaves to attack you. Clearly an apology is due to all those who donned foil hats in the 70’s and 80’s - we scoffed but little did we know.
11
Once this possible cause is known, you could actually say to the people, "Next time, put a pot over your head and see if the noise stops or changes."
1
I do not doubt the Frey effect can make people's brains perceive sound. I also can imagine that high power microwaves can cause medical problems like experienced by our diplomats. But that leaves the question about the audio recordings released by the AP. Does the Frey effect cause microphones to perceive sound? In my reading, there is no mention of that. I thought the analysis by Kevin Fu was pretty convincing https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/how-we-reverse-engineer... although this paper does not address how such ultrasound interference can cause physical damage. I was surprised that the article did not address this theory.
2
I'd like to imagine there's a way we can devise tinfoil hats that protect our diplomats from microwaves but can also protect Congressional Republicans from derogatory presidential tweets. Both activities may well be driven by Russian interests in a weaker America, and it'd be nice to kill two birds with one stone.
I personally favor the “aliens did it” explanations, although I have to tip my hat to the posters who claim to be sickened by cell towers and dread to arrival of 5G cell service. It’s a scary world out there. Good thing I have this tin foil helmet to protect me.
Cubans and Chinese ... sounds like this was more Russian interference.
2
This is so upsetting on so many levels. If it is true, it is purely evil, evil, evil. Another even larger shame on humanity and its abuse and misuse of knowledge and technology. And Francisco Palmieri of the State Department can take his "classified setting" and you know what!
5
Mr. Frey, who discovered the effect of microwaves on the head, has written some dozen articles in biology.
However, one finds no indication at all that he has published or otherwise shown expertise in National Security matters or similar work that would indicate a professional competence to judge the motives of the Cuban or Russian governments.
Even so, the Times finds it worthwhile to quote his musings on what is going on inside the Cuban and Russian regimes:
"He speculated that Cubans aligned with Russia, the nation’s longtime ally, might have launched microwave strikes in attempts to undermine developing ties between Cuba and the United States.
"'It’s a possibility...In dictatorships, you often have factions that think nothing of going against the general policy if it suits their needs.'"
This is not a trivial matter. A main popular belief is that our scientists won WWII with the A-bomb. This, added on to the traditional popular comprehension of science as magic, led the public to make of its practitioners experts on subjects far outside scientific fields.
Edward Teller, Father of the H-Bomb, authority on the USSR, was an example.
But, the most classic instance was Robert Oppenheimer, Father of the A-Bomb and Liberal Martyr, who seemed to think that his finesse in quantum theory justified his telling the same Teller to stop the latter's attempt to prevent the use of the Bomb on Japan.
Frey is not in good company. Neither is the Times.
1
Here's an article from Science magazine, where Bill Broad used to work, which shows how the Trump administration is using the excuse of these unproven embassy attacks to destroy Cuban-American scientific cooperation:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6374/404
U.S. policy on Cuba obstructs crucial medical breakthroughs
Michaela Jarvis
26 Jan 2018:
The new U.S. policy on Cuba is holding back science collaborations that can accelerate by years the development of early detection and treatment technologies for such diseases as Alzheimer's and cancer.
In July 2017, before the new policy was imposed, Cuban neuroscientist Marquiza Sablón traveled to Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) as a participant in the AAAS Cuban Biomedical Fellows program. At her home institution, the Cuban Neurosciences Center, Sablón had developed compounds with the potential to detect Alzheimer's disease when tagged with radioactive isotopes, a promising new technology that could potentially be used for diagnosis and early detection based on nuclear imaging techniques....
2
Totally appalling and despicable!
Microwaves are almost certainly used to recharge
bugging devices embedded in the walls.
Finally! We have a scientific explanation why the current US President’s behavior has been so inexplicably boorish and confused.
1
I doubt that you can park a van for any length of time in front of the building of a US mission anywhere on the globe without someone showing up asking questions.
2
But it wasn’t the mission; it was outside the employee’s home....
2
If the theory was true, its begs the question: "Who is behind the alleged attack?" We understand there were two locations - Havana and Beijing. Three possibilities and one alternative theory suggest the most likely culprits:
1) China
2) Cuba
3) Russia and China (Partners), and
4) U.S. contractor
We can eliminate Cuba. It has no national interest in harming the US., especially after the U.S. agreed to soften its Cuban policy and reopened the U.S. embassy. Cuba was likely 'used' by old allies - Russia and China, likely without Cuban 'official' knowledge, to test the microwave surviellance gear in Havana.
China has an ongoing military rivalry with the U.S. and its interest is to build its military prowess using novel high-tech gear, preferably at lower cost.
Russia has U.S. sanctions and U.S./NATO actions encircle Russia using nearby NATO ally bases.
The theory of microwave testing seems reasonable. Two embassy staff posts - Cuba and China, suggests that it wasn't a random event. China's recent internal silencing of U.S. agents is suspicious. The microwave test may have been a way to discover a list of U.S. agents operating in China - first tested in Havana, then Beijing - where the names may have been scrapped from data caught from microwave fishing.
IF the theory remains unproven after shaking the espionage tree (covert agents), then it may have been a U.S. microwave test that back-fired and harmed internal staff of the U.S. foreign postings in Havana and Beijing.
1
"And the F.B.I. declined to comment"
Doesn't that automatically mean it's a conspiracy theory where the deep state is responsible?
Very true
It happens in USA too as a hidden torture
It causes many health issues, all complains about it we’re denied
3
@Rima Dalati How do you know these things?
1
It would be marvelous if the results of the Task Orders for BAA-HPW-RHDR-2013-002 (Directed energy weapons bio-effects research project solicitation number) were declassified. The whole package for the project and the Task orders are fascinating and are readily available at FedBiz Opps or FBO.gov - it’s been online for years and has no classification markings on it. There is so much more to write about than any of these articles ever address. The Health and Human Services FOIA officer also made a disturbing statement in 2015 in a FOIA release regarding the contract awarded in response to this solicitation employing nonconsensual experimentation on persons ... as in Actual human beings - Americans - Not corporations.
3
Masers were invented before lasers. They produce tight coherent beams of microwaves as lasers do of light that cook like microwave ovens.
1
Pay back time.
What goes around comes around.
I'm a targeted whistleblower who's been getting attacked with microwaves for 2.5 years now. The targets in Cuba said the weapons were fired with laser-like accuracy, able to single out an individual. This is happening to me as well and I'm sure they do it by getting as close as possible. My attacks have been coming from my attic, wall cavities, and floor. I've also had extremely close chemical and microwave attacks out in public with seemingly no one around. They do this by using invisibility and I'm sure this is how it was done in Cuba. Over 20 people repeatedly attacked at close range and no one saw anything. My site details it: http://chemspray.weebly.com
2
Still sounds like nonsense to me, and mass psychogenic illness (ie mass hysteria) still seems like a FAR more plausible explanation.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2018/feb/23/what-happened-to-u...
Watch "And The Children Shall Lead" - original Star Trek episode featuring Melvin Belli.
1
Mircowave attacks are already happening, and to American citizens! Google "targeted individuals" and enjoy the deep and frightening rabbit hole. Our own government has gone rogue. These weapons are torture. They are invisible and cause real pain. Visit this guys reddit.com/user/willgofurther I learned so much reading his stuff but its all over the internet. People all reporting the same exact symptoms. Of course they would want you thinking that they are crazy but that logically would make no sense as you can read and watch literally thousands of different accounts describing more or less the same exact weaponry.
5
You are NOT alone in experiencing this. 10 of 27 Candian diplomatic personnel were withdrawn with similar symptoms. Who would do this? If not Cuba, then perhaps Russia, or North Korea...or just some rogue actor freelancing for whoever wants to pay them to do it. But do consider who poisoned people in the UK with a nerve agent, or who had his brother killed after he had exiled himself from his own country? Yes, those two countries would be prime suspects for any of this kind of thing.
2
I strongly suspect that these microwave attacks are intentional. These attacks occurred in Cuba and China. Both Russia and China desire a decrease in American influence in the world. The best way to do this is to sow discord and confusion. Sabotaging relations with Cuba is one means of turning the clock to a Cold War mentality. It is easy to manipulate Trump and members of the GOP.
This may be apocryphal; however, it has been said that Jiang Zemin was very pleased with the attack on the United States during 9/11. To think that China's Power Elite do not desire a diminution of American influence is very naive.
I would hope that individuals arrive at the realization that the Power Elites of any civilization are pretty much the same. They are cynical, desirous of power and have a very malleable moral compass (interpret that as no moral compass). Western Civilization for all its imperfections has created the methods to mitigate the excesses of these sociopaths.
To believe this was unintentional or unintended consequences of "eavesdropping" is to pretend that the perpetrators did not understand the nature of the technology employed. Those immediate to this activity may not have but those who supplied the tools most certainly did. They are not stupid.
The Canadian embassy in Cuba was closed because diplomats and staff experienced what appears to be the same type of attack.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4148090/canadian-embassy-cuba-dangerous-unexp...
2
This article, all speculation and with the Putin wedge in the last two paragraphs--of course--had produced the desired effect. See the NYT Reader Picks and how many have concluded that in effect Russia is behind the microwave sonar attacks. Why would Russia want to cause this mayhem that would lead to a derailment of US-Cuba relations? It was not in Cuba's interest that this happen (although with Cuban Americans behind Trump there was going to be some backpedaling on Obama's opening which Cuba very much needed. Why would they risk this? It does not make any sense from a foreign relations policy point of view. This is an irresponsible highly speculative piece of journalism. The Russian scare paranoia is getting out of hand.
2
There is no irony that we complain about other countries being more successful at doing to us what we want to do to them! A pox on both your houses!
1
why not to equipe each diplomat with microwave detector carry on. It will record the magnitude and duration of a beam.
So, the same micro waves used in our micro wave ovens at home? Or the same micro waves used by cell phones? Micro waves have been being used by the militaries around the world for quite some time now. The amount of micro waves used by cell phones is small in comparison, but over time, it has the same damaging affect. But that's different, our cell phones won't hurt us. Will they??? I for one won't be chancing it. I know a lot of smokers who say the same things about cigarettes, "I feel fine" or " I know a lot of 90 year old people who smoke". Oh well, you have been warned.
1
legionnaires disease?
1
We have met the enemy and they are us? Easy way to disrupt relations with Cuba?
1
I believe microwave weaponry is what destroyed the WTC and surrounding buildings. It is the only kind of technology that could explain the destruction without heat. How is it cars, no where near the Trade Center, were flipped, and although burnt, not hot. How is it that first responders went in and could touch metal that should have stayed hot for months? How is it that paper didn't burn???
1
The military has been testing and using microwaves since the cold war to do damage to humans and machines. As any tech knew back in the day, foolishly ignore warning signs or absentmindedly walk through a test area and he might never walk again--body parts fried. No surprise here.
1
So, which government tested Microwave Auditory technology on sea life, resulting in the 'mystery deaths' of hundreds of dolphins in the South Pacific a few years ago?
Just when you think Man couldn't get any more devious...
2
So are these weapons covered by the Second Amendment?
2
@Steve B.,
can one laser-print them?
The most logical conclusion is that members of the C.I.A. wanted to break up the warming relations with Cuba and succeed.
2
The science on this has been established for decades, and the US military has been active in this research, crafting non-lethal weapons inducing incapacitating biological effects from low-intensity radiofrequency radiation designed to disable the nervous system. Physicists commenting here simply do not seem to know (and should by now) that this is a reality. It has serious implications for other forms of pulsed RF too, including wireless technologies (cell phones, wireless laptops, etc).
The report 'An Assessment of Non-Lethal Weapons Science and Technology' by the National Research Council (2002 Draft) documented radiofrequency (microwave) radiation weapons that stun and startle (impairing the nervous system) without heating tissues.
"Leap-ahead non-lethal weapons technologies will probably be based on more subtle human/RF interactions in which the signal information within the RF exposure causes an effect other than simply heating: for example, stun, seizure, startle, and decreased spontaneous activity. Recent developments in the technology are leading to ultrawideband, very high peak power, and ultrashort signal capabilities, suggesting that the phase space to be explored for subtle, yet potentially effective non-thermal biophysical susceptibilities is vast." Page 2-13.
" Confusion, temporary memory, and additional stages of neural disruption might be assisted by the application of multiple stimuli, properly timed. " Page C-13
Thank you William Broad -
4
Fascinating article.
The question arises as to how one protects oneself from such a weapon. The first thing that comes to my mind is the screen on the front of a microwave oven. Maybe the idea of tinfoil hats is not so wrong!
2
"Francisco Palmieri, a State Department official, was asked during the open Senate hearing if “attacks against U.S. personnel in Cuba” had been raised with Moscow.
“That is a very good question,” Mr. Palmieri replied. But addressing it, he added, would require “a classified setting.”"
In other words, N0.
I could see Russia doing this. Destabilizing the u.s. has been a goal of Putin for a long time.
Gee, it's too bad we don't have any SIGINT equipment to listen for extraneous "signals" being aimed into our buildings in addition to those leaking out. But relying on physicians trying to ascertain the source is like having mine safety experts evaluating cat food.
Or, perhaps a better analogy, having Judith Miller evaluate aluminum alloys?
I’m waiting to see the JAMA story.
But: this piece is based on an old cold-warrior’s dreams and some serious lack of understanding about how non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation effects the body.
For a rough idea of the spectrum, non-ionizing radiation starts at sub 1-hz. Think of an AC pulse that’s on for a second, then reverses polarity (the direction electrons flow in the conductor) for a second, etc. as 1-Hz and remains non-ionization (not fast enough a variable) to knock apart atoms is a bad definition but it gives the idea, until you get to the shortest wavelength UV light, X-rays and gamma rays. Those, with sufficient power are ionizing and can “smash atoms”. Lower frequencies, like microwaves, can, at very high power - @150 watts in a box the size of a microwave oven, can shake water molecules causing them to heat. Light heats skin - at high enough power (like the sun ) or short range cause burns.
The 60s death ray was going to be the MASER doing to microwaves what LASERS do to light.But it turns out it’s a lot easier to collimate (make into a tight, tiny stream of photons) with light snd lenses than with the “plumbing” needed for microwaves. Lasers powerful enough to cut thin steel weigh in at 40 pounds and need lots of power.
A MASER powerful enough to vibrate bone or brain say 6 yards away requires a perfect path to the target plus megawatts of power. Disk antennas can’t make a tight beam.no rm fr whl stry
So short answer this article is pure cold war fantasy.
2
It's extremely disturbing that we seem so behind the curve on figuring out the covert warfare that's going on. We are still not tackling troll farms and bots on the internet front and now diplomats are suffering brain injuries from microwaves and it took us THIS LONG to figure it out? Thank goodness for Mr. Frey.
This seems so improbable that I can't believe it. When they were blaming sound waves for this anything I learned about sonic weapons made it clearly impossible. This article reads like a lot of hyperbolic speculation. Hysteria and psychology are almost certainly the keys here.
2
The only solution is to use severe kinetic force against the foreign individuals who did this. They should really be in fear now.
Scanning trough the comments I can't find any who discusses a group that more than anyone else is interested in destroying the relations between US and Cuba, the reactionary Cuban exiles in Florida and elsewhere. A group with traditionally good relation with CIA.
But nothing is too far-fetched not to blame Russia for, these days.
3
This is terrifying. Is there any way to deter or deflect these microwaves and protect the embassy staffs?
1
When we are talking about reheating a cup of coffee in the microwave, the first concern is the level of freshness, which is going to affect taste; second , asymmetric warfare, KGB, Putin, Cuba, Castro...
This tells me that the United Stars is already using this against other countries and that these microwave attacks in Cuba and China are retaliatory.
During the late 1970's, my aunt was employed at the US Embassy in Moscow. It was known that the Russians were hitting the Embassy with microwaves (eavesdropping) that were considered clumsy and quite large as opposed to the refined thin microwaves used today. Eavesdropping was well known there as the employees were warned about speaking loudly and talking about work issues.
She died in 1989 from malignant glioblastoma along with a few of her co-workers. We mentioned the possibility of the microwaves being a causal agent at the time to her superiors, but as expected, the idea was stamped and sealed as the coincidence
theory. My darling aunt did not want to pursue any blame as she feared losing her insurance and early forced retirement payments.
29 years later....seriously you can't gather information? Where are y'all looking?
149
If you’re looking for where the weapons may have been deployed, look no farther than the South. It may well explain the mind control aspect of the entire thing.
1
The only thing consistently present in the various embassies involved is America. If it's not faulty kitchen microwaves purchased by the State Dept. procurement people perhaps it's the CIA's faulty use of their devices to listen to leaders of the countries where it happened - or maybe to listen to what our own State Dept. people were saying in private. That would fit the picture perfectly.
The Russia! Russia!! business is becoming Wolf! Wolf!!
2
I wish to point out that, more than anything, this article reveals that the US can: 1. Implant speech into people's heads and 2. Make someone fall apart neurologically.
This suddenly lends credence to all the rumors of individuals being 'targeted' and is downright frightening.
3
In the 1960's, my father was a demolition contractor at the GE/Electronics Park plant in Syracuse, NY.
After several days on the job, he reported to us that his workers were experiencing pain and fatigue in their ankles, which caused them to need frequent breaks.
This phenomenon, as explained by a GE employee, was caused by "radar" waves, emitted by equipment in the factory.
Your story about these attacks reminded me of that incident.
Serious damage, described here as "Booms" might have been generated by microwave radio waves dimensionally tuned to the average dimension of the brain cavity. Within a fraction of a second, the billionths of a second waves would build up within the skull resulting in physical brain damage. It's called Resonance when a radio signal is tuned to an antenna, in this case, the skull.
Perhaps the Cubans are looking to start a war by attacking our embassy, in the hope of eventually being re-built after they were defeated?
Iraq is a mess, but Germany and Japan were re-built rather nicely after being vanquished by the US. Even Vietnam has far better relations and closer economic ties to the US than Cuba does.
It's frightening to me how many people appear to have come to the conclusion that brain damage due to microwaves has been proven to be the cause the symptoms in these diplomats.
If you read the article carefully, you will see that nothing has been proven including, most importantly, the presence of any brain damage.
The history of science is littered with theories that people were dead certain of and which proved to be false. Why don't we wait until we have actual objective evidence of such brain damage before jumping to any conclusions.
1) Keep a cellphone to your ear and maintain a regular 2-way transmission. If your transmission dies, this points in high probability to as focused microwave attack.
In places where there is no standard cell phone coverage, try to use a more expensive satellite phone.
2) If you get "sounds and "ear ringing" and other disturbances, briefly wrap your head in kitchen aluminum foil. If those disturbances stop, this too points in high probability to a focused microwave attack.
Do not be afraid to experiment outside the box. The sending side is always left at the mercy of your inventiveness...
3
Would microwave energy be part of the answer of how the 9-11 buildings came down, demolition style, mostly going up in clouds of debris, rather than piles of steel and concrete, or would it have to be some stronger form of delivered energy ? I'm not sure how strong these weapons can be built up to.
" ... Who fired the beams? The Russian government? The Cuban government? A rogue Cuban faction sympathetic to Moscow? And, if so, where did the attackers get the unconventional arms? ..."
Just because you are paranoid, does not mean they are not after you.
Sorry, these conspiracy theorists are simply telling a tale of not being able to find a viable explanation, so some people revert to the Cold War stories of old.
Microwave radiation is easy to detect and easy to trace, especially the kind of targeted radiation beam that one needs to accomplish what Frey describes.
And then the question is, what Russian runs such an attack in China?
If these people of the "secret Jason group of scientists", why not call the MJ12 to stick to a classic US conspiracy theory, are any worth their pay, all US embassies would have detection system for these microwave attacks which can be purchase at little cost in any halfway decent electronics shop?
Sorry, but it looks as paranoia of old gets the better of these people and as there is a current enemy, Russia, why not blame it on them?
Like the poison gas attacks for which there is still proof, neither of the used poison gas nor of the attacker.
Guys, this is the 21st century, prove your allegations or find another explanation.
2
Is the United States using this sort of disruptive tool against
some foreign embassies? Just curious. Would we pass up such an effective tool?
1
I am rather skeptical of any electronic weapon being developed today. Every conventional weapon manufactured today is of single use and in need of replacement after firing. So in my opinion we will never see a laser or blaster type weapon produced that does not employ a “razor blade” to discharge again.
The Trump administration is naive if they don’t expect that Russia will re-establish a military base in Cuba.
I see text messages being beamed into my head in the future. This is kind of scary science. Yikes.
@decencyadvocate We need to proactively stop that!
This notion holds no water at all. If the US ever suspected microwave attacks, it would be a very, very simple matter to detect and foil. Microwaves of a magnitude capable of physical effects such as these would be the easiest of child's play to locate. Why this ever made it to print boggles the mind.
1
It still sounds highly speculative.
It’s deplorable if true. But the US is at fault for failing to bring Cuba into its trade circuit, and leaving Cuba feeling that it needs Russian protection.
modulated energy sources have been carefully used since Marconi's days. as with most state department activity, the 'need' for secrecy to avoid ruffling someones delicate ego and attempting to use actual trust behaviors to prevent ignorant acts of conflict, these incidents will continue unabated. grasping diplomats with motives that go beyond simply negotiating "peace and understanding" and militant narcissts willing to risk anyone else's life other than their own, will play havoc with society thru any means at their disposal.
at least some technical investigation is being done, to find the possible source of this phenomena, as taxpayers are footing the cost to pay for it.
This was all new information to me, an educated person with good MSM sources of information. So many aspects of this article are frightening - the more so because of my lack of knowledge. We need follow up articles and investigation on the many threads this article spins out. What seems clear is that our country is under attack, currently led by Russia but with more countries wishing to do us harm. We need to consider ourselves at war, one that will be lost if we maintain our reliance and focus on "old style" warfare.
This is an outrage. But so is, by logical extension, the use of acoustical weapons (Long-Range Acoustic Devices, or LRAD) against US citizens on US soil, like law enforcement did against protestors in Pittsburgh during the 2009 G-20 summit. It was used on protestors on small local streets in residential neighborhoods with innocent families in homes directly in the path of the transmissions. I would love to see a New York Times follow-up to this article with a retrospective look at the effects of indiscriminate use of LRAD on civilian populations.
5
The Soviets weaponized microwave technology a long time ago. Now under Putin that weapon has been resurrected and had a test run in Havana, which is a former Soviet colony that was untouched by Glasnost and reform. To Putin’s delight, it is still 1965 in Cuba. Neither he nor the Cuban generals, who are responsible for keeping the Revolution alive, want better relations with the US. It is the US that is blamed for all of the failings of the dysfunctional Cuban economy. There is really little mystery in all this. Trump wants nothing to do with Cuba either so it will remain 1965 in Cuba for the foreseeable future.
2
Well this explains a mystery a family member was talking to us about. He recently traveled ( I won't say where)and noticed there was no microwave in his hotel room although it was originally advertised. They also did not have one in the breakfast room. He asked at the desk and was told staff would gladly heat something up for guests but they didn't keep microwaves out! We were pondering and wondering if there was some secret about microwaves they weren't telling us. I will definitely tell my relative about this article.
I guess my father was right. He never liked microwaves for some of the reasons described in this article. I always thought he was exaggerating but Pops right again.
1
Microwave ovens are highly shielded, so that very little energy escapes the confines of them. This is an industry requirement, and, if you want to prove it, put your iPhone or iPad in it (not while it’s on) and watch your WiFi signal disappear. WiFi and the ovens both operate at 2.4 GHz, which is blocked by the casing of the oven.
2
@Hellen,
most Europeans believe that microwave ovens only make the food taste bad.
@Christopher Loonam
Keep telling yourself that.
"The wife of a member of the embassy staff, it reported, had looked outside her home after hearing the disturbing sounds and seen a van speeding away."
After the van sped away did the disturbing sounds disappear? My question is how do people protect themselves while creating these sounds? Nothing from the scientists provides an explanation. One can cover their ears while shooting a gun but how does one protect himself while generating such harmful sounds? The only explanation would be to operate the machine remotely so the operators won't be affected.
2
What is the best personal protection to avoid microwave brain damage? I remember the aluminum foil headgear worn in an episode of CSI for protection from hostile extraterrestrial communications. On my upcoming trip to Cuba, I have wondered if I should wear a metal headpiece to protect my brain. Then again, when I put something metal in my microwave, it sparked and smoked.
I am not making light of the permanent brain damage suffered by our American diplomats, but rather taking it as a warning of potential danger.
5
Eons ago, I was an electrical engineering student. We had a lab course involving microwave radiation, and a few of us, myself included, suffered headaches and other uneasy feelings in the presence of microwave fields. At that time, our limits on what was considered to be "safe" microwave field levels were much higher than in some other places in the world. Interestingly, some of the most stringent standards were in force in Soviet bloc nations. It would not surprise me to see microwaves used in some strategic way against an opponent's personnel.
And, I believe the incidence of brain cancer has increased with the use of cell phones. I am sure Ted Kennedy and John McCain had cellphones plastered against their heads hours every day. I presently have a friend in hospice dying of brain cancer. For the last 15 years, he conducted all his business by cell phone.
5
@RM,
the senators did not develop GBM earlier than any other American. The average age of the Senate is close to the average age of Americans diagnosed with GBM.
1
I traveled to Cuba in 1997. I was in excellent health at the time but became ill shortly after returning to the US. I had vertigo, difficulty speaking and difficulty remembering facts. A stroke was ruled out and I was hospitalized several times. Eventually, doctors could not explain my condition.
Now I wonder if these symptoms could have been the result of intentional damage. I was staying in a hotel that, unknown to me, was used by Fidel as part of his "never sleep in the same for two consecutive nights". I saw him a couple of times there and every American was seen as a possible threat source.
The Cuban system is very paranoid and they are very pro-active on any potential loss of power, hence their shoot first, ask questions later mentality.
5
My family were and are victims of microwave attacks causing high pitch noise since 2006 resulted in illness, job loss and eventually loosing our house through foreclosure. We live in the USA.
We complained to the local police and the FBI. No investigation resulted in discovering the source of attacks.
It's good that some important scientific information is posted here for public knowledge. Keep up the good work and expose the odious people behind it.
10
I hope readers on all of the political spectrum read an article like this and see the value in generously supporting academic researchers in a free and open society!
27
Microwave attacks are entirely and perhaps uniquely plausible. Because they occurred in two countries in whose interest such attacks are absent, the finger of guilt must point to a third party, perhaps someone publicly admired and praised by our Siberian candidate?
6
Or it was the American military creating a cause for war...or at least a reason for upping pressure on China Russia and if course, Cuba. still technically a third party...but in any case, very difficult to believe the Cubans would attack our embassy people. They have too much to lose.
2
I am a biomedical physicist with extensive background in microwaves and in neuroscience. After a day of reflection on this article, I am very skeptical of the claim that microwaves are the likely explanation for the undeniable attack on US embassy personnel. Note that this claim regarding microwave is largely coming from medical doctors and not so much from microwave engineers, who will immediately spot the difficulty of delivering microwave signals of sufficient strength to cause biological effects.
We are all bathed in microwave signals from our wireless access points in our homes. Clearly those wireless signals are not causing the type of damage reported for the US embassy personnel.
The Frey effect seems to be well established scientifically, but does require signals of some strength that need special high power microwave sources that are accurately beamed at the subjects. As you can see from the accompanying picture, the antennas required are not easy to hide. Even then the collateral damage would be considerable to others in the vicinity because the microwaves would affect everyone in their path. I doubt that someone in a van on the street would be able to selectively target only some people in a building.
I do not doubt that the embassy staff were severely affected but there likely has to be some other explanation besides microwaves.
11
@Sri This biomedical physicist agrees. In addition to your other points, there is the issue of penetration depth of microwaves in water and water-based tissues. If microwaves were the culprit, I'd expect to see major skin heating and burning. The hypothesis in this article makes no sense, given the symptomatology.
6
Are you aware of Active Denial for crowd control? These are microwave-based systems, mounted on Jeeps. Microwaves are generated using high-intensity sources. No skin damage occurs, as I understand it. The existence of this system and its results contradicts your experience-based speculation.
3
Sri: "We are all bathed in microwave signals from our wireless access points in our homes."
Those are from omnidirectional sources. A dish antenna would increase the power in one direction.
Sri: "... the antennas required are not easy to hide."
"Required" for what? As a biomedical physicist, you are qualified to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation. What power would be needed to heat a head-sized mass by one degree C over a period of several minutes?
Sri: "... the collateral damage would be considerable to others ..."
Read the linked paper -- some of the patients were affected *at night*.
hammond: "If microwaves were the culprit, I'd expect to see major skin heating and burning."
If you correctly heat food in a microwave oven, it does not burn. Further, you are making assumptions about the specific biophysical process. Coupling with neurons may not require the same frequency as heating tissue. Try doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation in which you look at neurons and neurotransmitters, not water.
9
Some decades ago I worked on a power microwave technology that got some interest from the DoD for electronic warfare. The prime interest was interfering with air and missile guidance systems, not people. I later drew on this background to develop technologies that could probe biological systems, proteins and cells, to monitor biochemical and signaling pathways.
What's totally unclear about the hypothesis proposed in this article is how one overcomes the very strong microwave absorbance of water, the principal component of human tissues. Specifically, if powerful microwaves were focused on people, I would think that the first symptom would be warming of the skin. The absorption depth of microwaves in water is very short: on the order of millimeters, depending on the frequency. Thus, the majority of the microwave energy would go into heating up the skin and the shallow structures immediately beneath it. I cannot understand how these other symptoms could occur in the absence of very noticeable skin heating.
It sounds to this (ex)-physicist more like ultrasonic energy, though how one effectively transmits these higher acoustic frequencies into and through air, then back into human tissues, is unclear.
12
I recommend getting past the foreground story about weaponized diplomatic
intrigue. In the linked-to material -- the scientific reports and
patent applications, there is a far more important background
story: Yes, you can talk to the human brain with radio waves.
You might even be able to influence the stages of sleep.
On the basis of reading I've been doing over the years, I suspect
that this actually has been known since the 1930s, but never
published. The literature on the history of radio technology is
oddly sparse. But if I'm right, it's a story that must eventually
be told. These latest developments hint that the time might be nigh.
8
Both cases happened in a tightly social environment. And it is questionable this sort of microwave machines, whether they are used as a weapon or some eavesdropping device, can be concealed, especially when embassy buildings in these countries are probably reinforced.
This is a dumb move. Especially China, considering the Cuba attacks have been in the news for a while. While Russia and Cuba have always been a thing, China PLA has always been aggressive in espionage and cyber warfare. And it is questionable if Russia dares to operate in China so brazenly.
It is also possible all major countries have devices like these. Question is: are the perps sensible enough to reign in their operations before too late, now that it is a they-know-we-know story
2
@Bos How do you know this type of microwave machine can't be concealed? How big are they?
@Richard Green
Not technologist but physics is physics. If a microwave machine that can penetrate reinforced structures designed against eavesdropping, it requires certain amount of energy source and structure itself not to cause the operators and its surrounding troubles first, and perhaps line of sight.
If it is so easy, we would have 5G a long time ago. And you don't need multiple WiFi units for a big house.
Cold fusion and miniature weaponry at a distance remain science fiction stuff, not science.
Interesting article, but how could the author spend so many column inches on this without any discussion of ways to insulate against, detect, or even disable or neutralize microwave interference, particularly in buildings? Oh, that's right, the US government and law enforcement want to keep microwave disturbance for themselves, too, as a useful tool. Perhaps disguise them as huge metal flowers or other pop art at large events, and what not.
3
Well, it seems that it is time to issue the aluminum foil helmets. As the physicists commenting previously, this is not a difficult thing to eliminate or at least minimize as a threat once it is known. That it was suspected and nothing was done is the kind of error that our "intelligence" administrators need to minimize.
3
It would be pretty simple to set up a miniature microwave receiver (Diode) and alarm to alert the individual to the presence of radiation.
We use similar equipment in the A-level physics lab. to detect the position of microwave intensity. One in each room of the embassy surely, would help protect the individuals...
18
It is a mystery, but it certainly makes perfect sense that Putin would be behind something like this, especially after Trump was elected. It gives the latter the gentle push he needs to pull out of Cuba and help Putin restore the Cold War situation of a Russia-bound Cuba 90 miles from the USA.
6
@Anne-Marie Hislop: "especially after Trump was elected. "
The supposed microwave attacks also occurred after Obama did essentially nothing in response to the Russian attack on the US during 2016.
Putin needed no help from Trump in restoring any "Cold War situation". Hillary's reset button and President Feckless' inaction over 8 years seems to have done the trick nicely.
The video about the US military's work on "active denial activity" is interesting, but possibly unrelated. The audio talks about the use of heating effects at 95 GHz (so-called millimetre waves). As these audio rightly reports, these very short wavelength microwaves are mostly absorbed close to the very surface of the skin (a good explanation appears in a paper by le Drean et al. a couple of years back). The absorbed radiation causes thermal effects - if enough radiation is absorbed, these heating effects on the skin can be significant. The thermal effects are fairly well understood. They are quite different from the Frey effects that are mostly discussed in the article.
The use of mm waves for various therapeutic treatments (e.g. pain relief) has been fairly widespread in eastern Europe for decades, but the causal mechanisms appear not to be very well understood.
3
The question is who had most to gain from attempting to harm US embassy staff in Havana? The answer lies on the axis of minimal outrage - low fallout stretching to major incident
On this principle it sounds like a trial. As to who: America has many enemies - including those in the article
1
All speculation. If there is data, why isn't it in the detailed official report? Sorry, if one is going to accuse another country for real sabotage, one needs to provide data. Otherwise, it's just bad-mouthing.
5
The usual suspects are Russia and China et al....and why not?
Maybe it will be further confirmed, when the same things mysteriously happen to diplomats from Russia and China in the US.
And, conversely, of course, the US will have nothing to do with it.
Then, maybe our adversaries will deservedly learn, that our world is also round.
Enough of turning the other cheek.
5
From the estimates on the new US embassy in Jerusalem, we now know that the cost of building a US embassy could easily exceed $20 million. One could reasonably speculate that much of that cost goes into converting the entire embassy building into a virtual Faraday cage. Assuming the cage is made up of a relatively "fine mesh", it will be protected against external attacks by microwave beams.
One may wonder what happens if a moderate to high source of microwave energy is turned on inside the cage. Clearly, the cage would not allow microwave radiations to escape its walls. But that does not necessarily mean the released energy would immediately disappear or would be harmless.
For that to happen, materials used in the walls need to have specific properties for fast attenuation/dissipation of microwaves. If not, the trapped microwaves will be bouncing around within the walls of the embassy for a very long time. Those working in the embassy then could be exposed to a condition not much different from long-term exposure to microwave signals from their cellphones. The difference is that damages resulting from such an exposure could appear in no time.
4
@Eddie B.,
that in Baghdad cost a billion.
Microwave detectors can be as simple as a crystal diode.
Super cheap and small. Easy to carry microwave receivers as wearable devices connected to mobile phones for recording and documentation.
7
Why didn’t the monitoring devices installed at the Embassy fail to pick up any microwave invasion? I’ve never seen an article contains so much speculation and sourcing from parties you have an ax to grind-like the attorney for persons asserting claims.
Maybe it's not an international anti personnel weapon, but the side effects of some communications jammers. I have taken some exams where they are deployed to jam cellular service, and experienced nausea, but I can't tell weather it's caused by microwave or stress.
4
Back in 1985 it was known that the discharge from an anti static gun for vinyl records can corrupt the memory chips on an integrated circuit board used on electronic gaming devices. The payout of the device was programmed at 33% of the total tally, so the players chance of winning increases if the payout and total tally is compromised. To defeat this I installed an additional circuit board and antenna in parallel with the power supply that could pick up the electro magnetic frequency of the anti static gun. On detection an alarm would sound and power to the main circuit board removed. This technology was available over 30 years ago however the wavelength was a known dynamic.
3
Robert A. Heinlein's novelette "Waldo", from 1942, deals with the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiation's saturating the population. We seem to have advanced zero in our concern about it.
13
Why is there no report on microwave experiments in laboratory animals? Should be easy to test whether microwaves have deleterious effects or not.
1
This should be fairly easy to detect in the future. It is another thing the counter-intelligence people should be on the lookout for.
1
I always thought this was a listening device, not a weapon.
The Great Seal bug given to the US by the Russians operated by beaming radio waves at a resonant cavity, which changed its resonant frequency as the diaphragm moves back and forth, so that sound in the room modulates the reflected radio waves.
I wonder if the same idea can apply to the ear itself. Instead of using microwaves to move the eardrum, they're using them to measure the eardrum. Sound changes the resonant frequency of the inner ear (or is modulated by a nonlinearity in the ear bones) and the modulated microwave reflection is detected and converted back into sound.
4
Why did the microwave hypotheses take so long to make the top of the list? Could it be fear of revealing how well developed our own microwave weapons are? That we are so familiar with their effects? Anyway, it sounds like an easy thing to detect. Perhaps to save money targets of such attacks can rely on COTS solutions: driver's radar detectors.
3
@David Koppelman, Masers produce laser like beams of photons that do not disperse.
What is missing- who in the embassy was feeling this? Diplomats only are mentioned. Janitors and other support staff? What about folks in neighboring places? Sorry, as the democrats bizarrely resurrect the Cold War to oppose Trump, it gets harder to believe in the science presented. No, I am not a Trump supporter. Just a scientist.
7
@Kathy Barker Canadian media have similar reports of Canadian diplomatic staff and their families suffering similar injuries in Cuba. More of a mystery to Canadians, as so many of us considered Canada to be "friendly" with Cuba since Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Justin's father) befriended Fidel Castro back in the day.
Kathy Barker of Seattle folds into my paranoia of Russian “bugs” who are posing as Americans. Her remarks are unscientific, as rooms, or location, timings plausibly exclude non targets. I personally doubt the authenticity of her Russia sympathetic persona.
1
Are you really a scientist? You could use Google to answer your question about who else was affected. You think the Democrats control all media that had been reporting this since last year? Or the government, which has been investigating this?
1
Just to emphasize: my guess is that these attacks are being conducted with ultrasonic sound waves, not electromagnetic waves. Electrical shielding won't stop these, and they can have profound biological effects on the brain, as in a recently-developed treatment for tremors.
Ultrasonic waves, which are mechanical in nature, are often confused with electromagnetic waves. The latter have no known biological effects provided their frequency is below that of ultraviolet light.
4
You seem to be relying on an ill founded heuristic. Of course electromagnetic radiation below the energy of ultraviolet can have biological effects. Put any living organism in a microwave oven and you will see very immediate deleterious effects.
The technology described here could, in principle, be behind
claims that have sent people to mental hospitals: that they are
hearing voices. I think a case could be made that the means might
have been discovered as early as the 1930s. The written history of
radio is oddly sparse. In particular, one wants to know when
engineers first began tinkering with wavelengths as short as the
human body is tall. Almost certainly a few of them must have
wondered about, or accidentally discovered, what could happen when their beams were aimed at themselves.
7
Enjoyed the video on Active Denial Technology. That weapon has to be on every politician's Christmas list--if they celebrate Christmas.
Is it beyond our imagination that these weapons can go undetected and be used successfully against our political leaders?
3
Who is against improved relations between Cuba and the United States?
The Cuban government that needs to sell to and buy from the United States as well as more freedom in its international trade?
Russia that has more important issues to attend to?
The Cuban exiles in the U.S. and their Republican friends who are trying hard to eliminate all Obama's measures and actions?
Just asking?
9
Mr. Broad - thank you thank you thank you
Wow... what an article! I recently read "Waiting for Snow in Havana" by Carlos Eire - a "eulogy" for his native Cuba. He fled along with his brother when he was ten years old after Castro took power. Nothing about Cuba surprises me having read his memoir.
This is all getting more and more dangerous....
Thank you and the Times for your informative and powerful article.
8
Although we do live in a Batman-and-Robin world with some genuinely bizarre bad characters, I wonder about motive. Embassies are there at the invitation of the host country. If you want the workers in an embassy to go, you just declare them persona non grata and tell them to get out. So I am privately wondering about malfunctioning gear actually in the embassies themselves, or some sort of eavesdropping effort from outside based on a microwave carrier, which went awry. I think the idea that the embassy workers had whipped themselves into mass auditory delusions, is assinine.
12
When the weapons are used against Americans, it's an outrage and a tragedy.
When we develop and use the same weapons against others, we're patriots and heroes.
Hypocrites.
18
@Kevin Its already happening to American citizens! Google "targeted individuals" and enjoy the deep and frightening rabbit hole. Our own government has gone rogue. These weapons are torture. They are invisible and cause real pain. Visit this guys reddit page I learned so much reading his stuff but its all over the internet. People all reporting the same exact symptoms. Of course they would want you thinking that they are crazy but that logically would make no sense as you can read and watch literally thousands of different accounts describing more or less the same exact weaponry.
2
I was hesitant to disclose this, but this is my only opportunity in the interest of pursuing knowledge and justice;
The weapon could have been made for many decades after the advent of the Amana Radar Range microwave oven , I believe in the sixties. It's just as simple as adapting an off the shelf microwave oven magnetron tube and power supply, modulating AM, connected to a directive tube to create a sharp microwave beam. It could fit in a suitcase to escape casual detection. Microwave ovens operate at about 2500 Megahertz and the wave length is just a couple of inches making it ideal for impinging on a human brain. The brain would rectify the AM modulated microwaves that penetrate the skull just like they do food in your home oven. The AM signal modulation would be within the audio passband of about 20 to 20,00 hertz, or cycles. The microwaves would be heard and probably cause brain cancer from long term exposure.
As a side note, I am still perplexed by the fact that several Congressmen have died of brain cancer, most notably McCain and Kennedy. How does that play statistically among a limited number of Congress people?
17
According to the FCC radio frequency exposure limit tables, 2400Mhz is resonant with the tissues in the human eye. What this article describes is that frequencies higher than 20,000 Hz (the physical limit of the human ear) actually make a part of the brain itself vibrate that senses audible vibrations even if nothing is actually vibrating within the audible frequency range (none can hear it nor any mircophone detect it). From a directionality standpoint I think you have something except that a microwave (where the cooking occurs) is within a resonant cavity (sheilded by the metal walls) and thus has points of resonance that are higher than others, hence, why the food must turn or move back and forth to avoid cold spots.
As described within this article power levels far below the max 'safe' limit create the effect.
The construction of a faraday cage (with holes smaller than the wavelength of the harmful signal) could be constructed with a conductive material to attenuate the signal or block it all together.
As insane as this sounds, and we've little left to suggest and try at this point that hasn't already been suggested, experimentation with the idea of a copper foil that can be placed around the room is what I would try. In essense.....'tinfoil hats'.
3
@Ashley
The half wave length of a 2500 Megahertz radio wave is approximately 5.4 inches, close to the dimension of the brain. At that dimension and close, resonance occurs dramatically absorbing the radio waves. The brain is a natural antenna tuned for that frequency and thereabouts. The eyes are impacted by rectification of the waves and heat is the result of the eye's absorption. Yes, microwave ovens are shielded to hold in the energy for absorption by the food and the magnetron tubes radiate a quarter wave in the waveguide tube leading to the chamber, but the maximum current flow in the brain does occur with a half wave which is a multiple of that quarter wave output.
2
@Shakinspear,
Senators McCain and Kennedy suffered from glioblastoma multiforme or GBM for short. The average age of senators is close to the average age of patients diagnosed with GBM. Age is the likely culprit.
This is one of the least convincing articles I have ever read, assuming the goal is to make me at least suspicious that the evil Russians or Cubans or Chinese did it.
Sounds to me as though A. what originally happened was hysteria, B. the committee thought that too but wasn’t sure. Then, C. somebody, probably associated with the secretive government group, got to them. Play the game, boys. So, D. they are now playing the game, using this complicit reporter to push it to the people and let the Establishment know the current line.
More pro-war propaganda.
8
What if you're wrong? Plus, it doesn't look like we're going to war about this anytime soon.
1
We've been hearing and reading these stories since the 50s. The real news is that nobody has ever been able to do anything about the problem. Is anybody trying today?
3
Another Russia did it piece?
Science , just like journalism apparently, is influenced by the surrounding culture.
Didn’t the USA experiment with Psyc-ops weapons on American citizens during the 1950’s?
6
Which came first, the Conway/Trump knowledge of microwaves as terrorists or microwaves actually being used in this horrendous, tortuous way?
1
@JGMcPhee: Stealth (microwave? ultrasonic?) weapons are being used on many innocent people by common criminals. Police departments have their hands full, dealing with the kinds of crime that they've historically dealt with, and can't deal with this invisible kind of attack. So when it happens, the victims are ignored. The general public is blissfully ignorant of this horrible reality.
3
It seems to me that publishing an article that is highly speculative and further that ends with the conclusion that because the attacks occurred in foreign soil the crisis was a novelty the attacks were sporadic in nature we will never solve it or much less file any charges is highly irresponsible. Further the scientists offering the hypothesis show total ignorance of the length to which the Cuban government cooperated, three separate visits by the FBI and numerous investigative agencies of the US Government and it’s Security agencies. Moreover the idea that a van with unidentified purposes and drivers could freely travel around Havana outside the Embassy and the Homes of US Diplomats especially after the first incidents is beyond absurd and shows a particular ignorance of the extent to which Cuba went to protect these individuals
6
Although less power reaches the Earth's surface, or your TV dish, almost all satellites transmit in microwave bands, and there are hundreds of satellites in Geosynchronise orbit as well as thousands of satellites in closer orbits moving relative to Earth. You may not hear the microwaves, but they are there like electromagnetic pollution. I don't think they present a health concern, but you should know, military satellites are classified. Then again, the Sun projects about 1000 watts of microwave, infrared, visible, and ultraviolet radio waves on every square meter of Earth. Hughes owns a satellite TV service. That concerns me. Remember Hughes and his friendship with the C.I.A.?
1
This is what those of us who know anything about RF fields have been thinking all along. The thoery where the giant flagpoles werw the antennas? Really? Signs our educational system is severely lacking....
2
Cook the brain so Americans can't do science and depend on foreign science pretty interesting but as the brain of society is in any person regardless of what government structure; causes not just collapse for the other but disintegrates the society within. What happened to societies to cause such a bitterness for life no matter who designs the mechanism?
1
I believe that staff at the Canadian embassy in Cuba were also affected by the same 'attacks'.
1
This is only a mystery to those with a security clearance lying somewhere below the need to know threshold. Acknowledging such attacks would point toward “our” own development of these same arms. It’s only the beginning though and soon enough your local precinct will have these wonderful “non lethal” options at their disposal as well. The non lethal being in quotations until the tumors start to grow. Crowd control for Major Tom?
2
One could also make the case that these attacks on our embassy and diplomatic personnel are the result of the liberal opposition reporting of our presidents words and policies framed in such a light that one assumes a hostility, bigotry or motive on the part of the president where it does not exist.
1
Why would the Cuban government do this after trying for 50 years to lift the embargo?
Was it hardline Cuban Communists who want no interaction with the US and did it to drive the US out?
Was it covert Russian or Chinese operatives who do not want closer US-Cuba relations?
Was it hardline CIA or covert anti-Cuban US operatives who do not want closer US-Cuba relations?
The answer is the same. Create closer US-Cuba relations to thwart whoever did it to sabotage the detente.
2
I know this is nothing to joke about, but I can't help thinking that perhaps this is an explanation for the bizarre behavior and resistance to truth of the average Trump supporter.
7
During a sponsored medical visit to Havana 10 years ago, a local physician would not speak to us on the street because of the listeners. He had been refused immigration to another country by Fidel. At 2 AM, my hotel phone rang and someone who called himself "a friend" invited me to come to the lobby to speak about something unstated. Maybe it had to do with my contributing to a synagogue that was vandalized by the local antisemites. The call really alarmed me. The hotel staff of course had no clue when I called the desk. I any case, this charming country with its UNESCO sites is still not someplace to be careless.
1
I strongly suspect these microwave "attacks" are unintended consequences of a form of eavesdropping where sound vibrations are detected by reflected radiation. When it works, you can listen to conversations in rooms where there are no microphones... glass or metal objects act as crude diaphragms.
112
@Jim Ebright is right. This is similar to the photophone. A microwave for getting sound from window glass would prevent them from being detected. The microwave light is invisible, it can be focused into a high power beam which increases the range that an eavesdropper can pick up conversations. The way to beat this is to install devices that attach to windows and vibrates them with random noise making it impossible to pick up conversations. I suspect this happened at their homes too to help craft spear phishing attacks and find exploitable personal information. The diplomats would also have to install white noise machines for their home windows.
4
@Jim Ebright I think it would be very unlikely to use several kW of microwaves that could cause injury just to listen for any phase modulated reflections.
I'm pretty sure that could be achieved with much less power.
A Faraday cage would provide an effective defence as would a tinfoil hat!
My advice to diplomats in such a position - have a microwave detector and some aluminium foil handy just in case, and install fine wire mesh around the building.
1
But I think “listening” in the audio portion of the spectrum, is completely unrelated to “emitting” in the microwave portion of the spectrum.
Even if they were “listening” in a different portion, it is not emitting.
So you are supposing they are emitting non audio frequencies in order to detect audio.
Seems unlikely, but maybe they have found a new way to emit in one frequency - and due to a ripple effect -“listen” in another.
Basically combing the two.
1
I don't understand why this is a problem since defense is 'easy'. A grounded mesh of conducting material with the mesh scale corresponding to the size of microwaves should be very effective at absorbing the radiation. Lining the walls, floors and ceilings of an embassy or home with that material should produce a shielded, safe space inside. Of course, your cell and wi-fi wouldn't work, but your head would! And you could still communicate via ethernet cable, albeit an old technology.
1
Why aren't all embassys built as faraday cages in the first place? Seems like this type of warfare has been known for many decades, surely the inner walls could be lined with something to shield from this type of attack. There also should be detectors detecting outside signals from the entire EMF spectrum in many locations of the building to determine anomalies and directions that they're coming from. We're the richest nation on the planet, surely we can afford this for at least the embassies in politically sensitive areas of the world.
5
I would accept that the effects were coming rom microwaves. but I do not believe the attacks were directed to harm people. The pattern of cases includes both government workers and mere tourissts as victims. I would more likely believe the microwaves were being trained on glass panes near critical facilities in an effort to "hear" what was going on inside rooms with important meetings and important topics being discussed. Diplomats might have been discussing ongoing events inside their offices or hotel rooms. I believe this is an example of an intelligence resource.
1
In the late 1950s the soviets used low power density microwave beamed at, and reflected from embedded resonant cavities to detect speech and sound. Higher power is required to cause the neural effects mentioned in the article. Still high power (kilowatt range per square meter) will so agitate the water molecules in tissue as to cook it. Maybe you have heard of the “microwave oven”
2
Some people seem to doubt that microwaves can do this kind of damage. I learned about this some 20 years ago in a networking course: People in an apartment building on a certain foor kept mysteriously dieing, after enough deaths, they investigated, and it turned out there were microwave antennas (communication) on both sides (directional) aiming through that building at the level of that floor. The idea that this can happen predates that to long before i was born.
19
It is the first reasonable hypothesis that I remember hearing. But who gets anything out of making trouble in Havana or Beijing? Are there transportable available radar antennas that powerful, capable of penetrating walls? What power source do they require? I can't imagine security guards allowing an unidentified big truck or large van stationing outside a sensitive embassy. Yet, it sounds credible except that we don't have the how and why it is done
@Joan
maybe it is the current administration that benefits?
So much energy of some sort was constantly aimed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during the Cold War that people simply touching the outside of it all but got burned. How much electricity was wasted by the desperate Soviets that was supposedly generated to be used by their third-world citizen-prisoners?
The most inhumane schemes seem to always be employed by the people trying to prop up or grow all-powerful national governments dependent on power and control over their citizens - whether in Moscow, Havana, or Beijing.
3
During my first tour in Moscow 1977-79, the U.S. Embassy was subjected to microwave radiation. Although I was directly in the path of a couple of the microwave sources, I never experienced any auditory symptoms, and ways were found to counter the attacks. Several theories were advanced as to why the Soviets, specifically the KGB, were targeting the Embassy with microwaves, including: (1) to activate listening devices, (2) jam electronic equipment, (3) exert psychological pressure, or (4) affect the health of Embassy personnel. If the purpose was psychological pressure or to affect health, the Soviet program succeeded. There is a lot of skepticism about the current symptoms that have been reported by U.S. personnel in Cuba, and also in other locations around the world. I would ask those who think that this is all some sort of conspiracy theory to check their skepticism at the door and take seriously the reports of those who are the latest victims of these sonic/microwave attacks. This has happened before, and it is very likely happening again, just with the "benefit" of forty years of research and development.
22
I have my doubts. This sounds like one more speculative theory. No one has explained WHY anyone would want to carry out these attacks.
Is there any evidence these attacks were carried out by anybody, much less pro-Russian Cubans trying to damage improving relations with the US (and Canada apparently since their diplomats have shown some of the same symptoms)? No. This is more speculation by someone with an apparent agenda.
Maybe the "attacks" were a result of a poorly constructed microwave oven. Or maybe not. Once you allow your imagination to run wild, anything becomes plausible.
3
If you read the article carefully you will see that many thoughtful people have weighed in on the question. It is certainly not one person’s wild speculation, and it seems unlikely to be from a broken microwave.
6
@Ian
"many thoughtful people have weighed in on the question."
I fail to see ANY thoughtful people, which specific people did you have in min? Perhaps "Mr. Zaid, the Washington lawyer, who represents eight of the diplomats and family members, said microwave attacks may have injured his clients. "?
" it seems unlikely to be from a broken microwave. "
Why is that more unlikely than it was dissident Cuban supporters of Russia who were responsible? Only to people living in media lala land.
1
There are plausible aspects of the "targeting" narrative that suggest that stress-induced hysteria plays a role in it, at least in the original Cuba 'incident'.
There were recordings that sounded very much like cicadas (which can reach a pain-inducing level with their noise). No physical damage was actually proven.
2
Hi,
I know the answer. It is not coming from human beings, or human governments. It is coming from outside our human world. From an outside alien source. The energy causes a physical damage to a protective layer of our human form. The damage makes our skin basically permeable to the "outside." When this damage is complete there is no protection form the world beyond our own, which we cannot normally see. I have felt this same energy for years, and combined with my mind altering and awareness expanding practices I know for sure the thing that ails us.
Yours truly, Andreas
3
For those of us afflicted with EHS, aka microwave sickness or radio wave sickness, these are not hypothetical issues or truths. I, and friends of mine who also suffer from this condition, immediately recognized the symptoms the victims of the Cuban Embassy attack described. The science on this has been well established for decades, but has been categorically denied in the US. The March NYT article titled "How Big Wireless Made Us Think Cell Phones Are Safe" exposes the sinister coverup. People need to understand the dangers of EMF/RF radiation, because the 5G roll out is upon us, which represents a tenfold increase over 4G radiation. Corporate media have played a critical role in the disinformation campaign, and corporate media can turn this looming meta-crisis around. This article is a very encouraging first step.
18
I am very very sorry you are ill. But I doubt it is caused by microwave exposure- unless you worked for a long time standing in front of microwave-generating equipment- in a direct line with the “gun” at the end of a klystron, without taking any precautions, like wearing a minimal Faraday cage - like a bag of very fine metal mesh.
Within a yard or two of the generator - if you were a technician, you would be aware of our this - and of the inverse square law - stand a foot from a non-columnated (the use of electro-magnetic fields as lenses), the beam covers an area 4’ square (well, round actually, but the math’s easier) of the strength when it left the source. It works regardless of what he is nits you measure with, and is more of a rule of thumb than anything else.
Aside from your, you must admit, anecdotal cases, please reply and list any real peer-reviewed article showing non-ionizing radiation (beyond the tremendous amount of visible and UV dumped on us by the sun) can cause any health problems.
What the writer meant by 4G/5G - fast wireless OUTDOOR transmissions TO cell phones, over a wide radius, from the top of a phone pole orbtower has NOTHING to do with cell phone emissions.
And NO reputable experiment has been reported showing a danger from the very low-power signals from the phones.
If they did, the FDA would be mandated by law to repeat the experiment.
As far as I'm aware, no one has yet been able to provide actual proof that any of the embassy people suffered brain damage. The fact that symptoms may be related to this doesn't mean that actual brain damage exists. I am sure all these people have had million dollar work-up for brain damage yet no one has provided any evidence that they suffered any. Does Dr. Golomb or Mr. Frey have any explanation for this? All they have is speculation which, with $4, will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
8
Wouldn’t it be necessary to dissect the patient’s brain in order to definitively prove brain damage? For example, the NFL players whose brains have been autopsied when they were DEAD.
2
@Steve
and by the way the cubans invited the fbi to come and investigate, which they did and surprise the fbi will not share their “evidence”with the cuban investigators.
1
@Miriam Chua,
I agree that conclusive evidence would only be found postmortem. However, one can observe consequences of brain injury while the patients are alive. For example, reaction time can be tested. Latency of stimulus-evoked electrical nerve cell responses recorded from the skull can be examined. Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging may provide insight. Molecules released by dying nerve cells into the cerebro-spinal fluid may be found in spinal taps.
This sheds more light on the government's multi-billion dollar investment in a 'smart' grid, including RF radiation producing smart meters attached to every home. Add to that the upcoming 5G wireless network, with 5G cell towers every 250 feet.
Not only do these technologies emit dangerous levels of RF radiation many times the amount known to produce changes that are carcinogenic, but they put technology in place for control of the population.
There is no limit to the desire of those in power to control and profit from everything and everyone.
19
I just hope that our present weakened political co diction doesn’t tempt a bad actor state to use what they have before we recover our senses. So far ... not much fear of that.
2
As the Democrats turn up the anti-Russian rhetoric, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised Cold War paranoia is also in the rise.
Microwaves are easily detected, so absent any confirmed measurement of same, we can conclude that the scientists are just saying what they think Washington wants.
4
How do you propose to measure microwave radiation emanating from a moving vehicle?
So you’re saying that those scientists just made things up because Washington - run by Republicans right now, who have dragged their feet on investigating Russia’s actions - wants to hear them? That seems very unlikely.
3
@Ian Believe it or not, most of Washington isn't partisan.
Our president would have us think that Vladimir Putin is our friend. Why would a friend beam potentially lethal microwave radiation at U.S. embassy personnel?
A permanent international moratorium should be placed on this type of weapon in the same vein as chemical and biological weapons (and all weapons of mass destruction).
Any attack on a U.S. embassy is a direct attack against the United States. The perpetrator should be tried for a war crime.
16
...seems suspiciously deliberate in order to wreck fledgling diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba.
10
Equally convincing research concluded, two years after the end of the Cold War, that around four million living American citizens had been abducted by aliens, primarily for examination of their reproductive organs on orbiting spaceships.
It seems iresponsible to now blame old coldwar bogeymen like Cubans, Russians and Chinese, when extraterrestrial scientists are far more likely culprits.
4
How long before this is deployed against crowds of legal protesters in this democracy? How long before it is directed at the next women's march, the next black lives matter march, the next gun control protest? Unless we find a way to rescue our country from the swamp king, these scenarios are a very real possibility. They will be spun as non-lethal and compassionate, but they will speed up the demise of America as we know it.
31
Even now Putin’s puppet is using this to steal elections.
So I guess the solution is drones hovering over embassies, and when a dark van is seen speeding away from the embassy, neutralize it. Or maybe embassies could have giant mirrors and just reflect it back at these bad guys?
I would also be interested to know who is behind these terrible attacks on our good people...who has the capabilities and technology to do it in two totally far away countries? I would take a guess and say Russian agents...
1
“Cubans aligned with Russia, the nation’s longtime ally, might have launched microwave strikes in attempts to undermine developing ties between Cuba and the United States.”
And there you have it! The plan worked as hoped for.
As a counter move, why not embrace Cuba all the more closely. That’d be the best deterrent against future use of this brave new weapon and better geopolitical policy at the same time.
7
Does this mean that the wireless networks could be hijacked to injure everyone within earshot? It would not surprise me in the least.
6
“Moscow was so intrigued by the prospect of mind control that it adopted a special terminology for the overall class of envisioned arms, calling them psychophysical and psychotronic.”
And then Zuckerberg developed Facebook.
17
More hostility toward our diplomatic corps. We live in a dangerous time as we have some known enemies capable of mounting such a stealthy attack on Embassy staff. But, our security agencies are being hobbled by what some may call rotten politics, political attacks on staff that do not appear to be rational or justifiable. The situation cries out for changes to preserve our ability to quickly respond and discourage future attacks on American staff.
9
Speaking as an average Joe, it seems that “asymmetric warfare”, including political subterfuge, is the critical determinate of future war “victory”....however you want to define victory. We have between 10 and 19 aircraft carriers, of which the Navy considers 10 to be actual carriers. The Chinese have developed a specific “anti aircraft carrier missile” which greatly concerns our military. Imagine the technological power, blood, and treasure that could be eliminated by a mere 20 small missiles. Imagine the disruption from anti-satellite weapons (small missiles and lasers) to our entire military infrastructure. The age of “big guns” and “bombing runs” are over, at least for the major players. The critical thing is that everybody knows that doing something so provocative that it induces the use of nuclear weapons, including small “tactical” nuclear weapons, would invite full scale retaliation and global destruction. In WWII we “wore down” the Germans and Japanese to victory, but unleashed the nuclear genie. Now, with such things as microwave attacks on diplomatic personnel and cyber political interference, will it be “death by a thousand small cuts?”
151
@Fearless Fuzzy
You may have pinpointed how the nature of warfare and conflict are transforming, where the weapons are novel and the assailants irregular. The greatest offensive on American soil in the last couple of decades involved students and box cutters. How can aircraft
carriers and nuclear weapons defend against that?
5
Once again, after meeting with our diplomats in various parts of the world, I can’t help but mention after reading this article, about the enormous sacrifices that diplomats and their families often endure during entire careers as professionals.
It is often dangerous, lonely and underreported about the service that career diplomats do for our country. Their postings overseas are temporary and after 3 years or so, they are off to serve in another location, sometime fraught with greater problems than before.
I hope this problem with the safety of our diplomats will find a resolution very soon.
Thank you for your service to all of those career people serving the State Department overseas.
73
@JT FLORIDA, on behalf of all FSOs and their families, I thank you. For the first 15 years of our married life, on average my husband and I moved to a different country every 18 months, including Cuba. Our kids were born in foreign countries far from our families where we barely spoke the language--at 13 and 14 years old, they're now on their 5th school and their 5th country. They've had to accept that leaving friends is a part of life (as is wiping their backsides with newspaper when there's a TP shortage).
But winning hearts and minds can only be done on the ground, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to represent America. Our whole family takes that responsibility very seriously and always strives to live up to the trust that has been placed in us.
1
Not a new phenomenon. A little over 30 years ago, I was in a conversation with persons who had experienced very similar from Russia during World War II and after in Eastern Europe. It was well known at that time that Russia could torture people with sounds, such as with a frequency that the average person cannot hear, but that causes pain and neorological effects. It was feared that Russia could take out an entire army like that, which however was not done as the technology apparently was not sufficiently advanced. A person who was a physicist said she thought these could be microwave radiation, but she did not know for sure. Friendly forces could use this also. For example, the sound of a falling pin meant that something good was about to happen. Much more effort has to go into analyzing such issues when they happen, and not decades later when one is finally personally affected by them.
A lot can be done with sound, and humans hear only a small spectrum from the entirety that exists. Dogs for example can be trained with specific frequencies that we don't even hear, because their hearing is much finer than ours.
7
The article provides interesting scientific information, but then jumps to blaming the Russians (really? in tightly controlled police states like Cuba and China?) This accusation seems to have no basis, other than that blaming Russians is in vogue (just as mocking Romney’s warnings about the Russians in 2012 was).
4
@Beantownah
Romney was abusing the security briefing he was privy to after becoming the GOP nominee. Obama couldn't respond because he refused to use what he knew.
Romney was speaking out of turn in his desperation to close the gap with Obama.
6
I don’t think the Russians would have difficulty doing something like this in Cuba, as the article makes it quite clear.
8
@Beantownah Cuba and Russia have been good buddies, since Russia assisted the overthrow of the previous form of government. Fidel Castro and his brother were big buddies of the Russians. If you are old enough, you might remember when we worried, because a Russian submarine had docked in Cuba?
The oddest thing is that the US govt never mentioned microwave weapons, which now seem like the most likely explanation. Me thinks the US govt doesn't want us to know they are developing such weapons.
And, yes, with the chemical weapons attacks on former diplomat in the UK and elsewhere, the Russians have to be the prime suspect. Sad.
6
The Russians out of the goodness in their hearts forgave tens of billions of dollars of Cuban debt it was written.
Cuba was expressing it's gratitude.
4
The US should be able to easily, inexpensively and discreetly monitor, log and analyse the full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation passing through any sensitive location on a constant basis. If they haven't been, hopefully they will from now on.
7
We certainly have devices that can warn of a microwave attack. If we can determin that Assad is responsible for a poisonous gas attack just after the report when the news comes back from commercial we can measure micro waves being focused on our embassies as it happens. Since microwaves can be schielded against, where on earth is all our money going for defense?
14
Of course you can detect microwaves, easily. Of course you can shield against them, easily.
But it's much harder to defend against an attack which occurs in the victim's own imagination. I expect that taking additional precautions against imagined "microwave attacks" is only going to lead to more imagined incidences of "microwave attacks".
Three data points, possibly unconnected.
In the mid-1980's, Ronald Reagan's Star Wars project was being run out of the Matomic Building, at 1717 H Street, NW, in Washington, DC. I worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, upstairs. The Star Wars people used to joke that they could put an uncooked chicken on the windowsill in the morning and it would be ready to eat by lunchtime. They knew, or at least believed, that the Soviet Embassy was beaming microwaves at their windows on a massive scale.
The Soviets, having outgrown their old embassy on 16th Street, had somehow persuaded the Americans to let them build their new one on one of the highest hills in DC, with a commanding view over the city. Half a mile away was the Vice President's residence, at the old Naval Observatory.
In about 1991, both George H. W. Bush and his wife developed Graves' Disease (hyperthyroidism), a non-contagious autoimmune ailment. The Government assembled a team of experts to study whether there could be a common cause for what would otherwise be a freakish coincidence. No doctor myself, I certainly hoped they would explore the possibility that some sort of radiation, beamed at the VP's residence when they lived there, was responsible.
Finally, there is the pioneering work that the Soviets conducted after WW2, using beams aimed at buildings to obtain readable voiceprints of conversations inside. Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev, then Gulag prisoners, took part in it.
29
By the 1980s doing was done by bouncing laser beams off the windows.
You don't know what causes autoimmune diseases like Graves disease? Well, the commonest cause is pregnancy. But viruses and bacterial infections are known.
Hormone supplementation in middle age is often given. Some of us got our hypothyroidism the easy way, from radioactive iodine released from the fallout of open air nuclear testing.
George Bush 41 was a high energy fellow while in college. Likely he was hyperthyroid his entire life but it wasn't diagnosed until he was president. He probably married a high energy woman. The onset of overt hyperthyroidism during menopause is not uncommon. If they both had it, it probably gave them a happy home life.
They have been testing these on federal employees for some time. It's not like the US doesn't also work on these, There are also a number of chemicals used (presumably as tests) that are undertaken on federal employees and the perfection of gas lighting techniques in combination to the chemical weakeners/mind weakeners. Your programed to disbelieve the real conspiracies because they have created so many fake conspiracies. You have no idea what is really going on. Fortunately what ends up happening is that only really dumb people fall for these things or can be manipulated by these techniques and so smart people leave the government and are then no longer under the thumb of the psychopaths that dream of population control techniques. The unfortunate part is that the only people left in the government are either totally mind controlled or at least burdened by the mind numbing techniques, but then incapable of ever believing tat such a thing could occur.
The various IGs are really inadequate in any oversight of agencies and departments. They are more like political organizations than police entities even though they pretend otherwise. The FBI is as much political in general (except on specific topics) and defers to readily to the IGs. In my opinion there is not an adequate law enforcement entity to know what is really going on in many agencies and departments.
1
Trump acts like a Putin asset.
Trump wants to undo everything Obama achieved.
Cuba normalizing relations with the US cannot be viewed as a "good thing" by Russia.
Russia has a free hand to do whatever they wish to do in Cuba.
Put it together and the most likely scenario is a clandestine Russian intervention (with or, more likely, without) knowledge of the Cubans. (The panel truck incident suggests a portable, concealable strategy.)
What are the chances that, In one of the many private phone calls between Trump and Putin, Putin suggested that Trump used the attacks on Americans in Cuba as an excuse to undo this Obama accomplishment? Pretty good, I would think. (Although the Russian sabotage could work its evil magic without a Putin "nudge" of Trump.)
5
@Mark Johnson
Good job.
This does sound like Russian logic. May very well be true. The Soviets framed a few of their enemies in WW II and do think like that.
1
Much of this article, and many of the comments, would be more at home in the National Enquirer than with the Old Gray Lady.
As a rational European, I am genuinely shocked.
4
None of the sources in this article seems remotely shaky. On the contrary they seem intelligent and thoughtful.
And there is nothing credulous about the article itself. It lays the case out, without asserting that it is the only explanation.
The Old Gray Lady seems to be doing her job quite well.
3
Why would Cuba provoke an incident that would give Trump, who openly opposed closer ties, an excuse to back track on it, considering the several years of hard diplomatic work?
We can't blame Cuba for what happened in China, can we?
We don't have to be CIA analysts to see the obvious fingerprint of the Kremlin...
11
The more I think about this microwave-used-as-a-weapon hypothesis, the more I doubt it. One commenter mentioned that microwave intensity diminishes with distance following the inverse square law. I don't know whether that law holds for bundled micro-waves, but the intensity does certainly diminish with distance. Moreover, there will be absorbing obstacles between transmitter and receiver, like rebar-reinforced concrete walls of buildings. Anyone knows whether a machine generating the micro-waves needed would fit in a van?
2
"One commenter mentioned that microwave intensity diminishes with distance following the inverse square law."
That's only true for a theoretical radiator emitting from a point in all directions, in which case, the wave fronts are spherical.
"I don't know whether that law holds for bundled micro-waves, but the intensity does certainly diminish with distance."
Microwave dishes increase the power in one direction at the expense of decreased power in other directions. In antenna theory, the antennas have "directional gain".
However, cell phones don't have dishes, yet they emit enough power to reach a cell tower a mile or so away.
"Anyone knows whether a machine generating the micro-waves needed would fit in a van?"
A microwave dish would easily fit. Do a Google images search for "microwave dish". And see the "Antennas" section of the Wikipedia article titled "Microwave":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Antennas
2
@JSR,
thanks for the clarifications. But what size needs the generator to be for the microwaves to be strong enough to impact the brain of a person in a room behind a concrete wall across the street?
If we had normal relations with Cuba I guess this would not be an issue. We could be working together for a solution. I work with a lot of Cubans. I have no understanding why Cuba could not be a state in the United States. I suspect there are more Cubans now living in the US than in Cuba anyway. The Cuban economy would explode is it was part of the US.
To detect these microwaves would take a very sensitive detector and you would have to know the frequency, it could just look like ordinary electromagnetic noise, just as an F18 radar signal does to other aircraft in the same area.
Very low power, possible variable frequency, one possible test would be for those who suddenly experience this phenomena to wear a head cover that would block such. I know it sounds like the tinfoil hat Idea, but it could have some validity in such a case.
4
Why would it take a very sensitive detector if it was so powerful as to cause damage? If it just looks like ordinary electromagnetic noise, how is it even any different from ordinary electromagnetic noise?
Interesting and perhaps a note of concern - perhaps a bit far out there, but perhaps not.
With the upcoming 5G cellular standard some countries (e.g. Switzerland) have forbidden carriers to increase the signal intensity necessary to make a 5G network dense and reliable enough. The government of Switzerland argued that not enough is known on health impact of high energy microwave radiation. I do not know if 5G is in the bandwidth in which the Frey effect may materialize.
Also note that Microwave ovens are shielded with a metallic mesh (you can see it in its windows) to prevent the waves getting out of the oven and inflicting damage to tissues outside of the oven.
Last - I am not an expert on microwave radiation but begin to put clues and observations together. One day when i have time I will have to read up on this and validate (or not) my suspicions.
5
It has not been proven that there was any injury, much less the cause. The many caveats in the accompanying editorial seem to have been overlooked: "Several important considerations should guide interpretation of these data. First, although the patients were united to some extent by the common locations in which their symptoms first developed, there was some variability between patients in terms of the symptoms that each experienced. The precise time course over which each individual’s symptoms evolved was not provided. Given that evaluations were conducted a mean of 203 days after onset, it remains unclear whether individuals who developed symptoms later were aware of the previous reports of others. Furthermore, the quantitative results for specific tests (eg, neuropsychological tests) are not yet available for all affected patients, so independent assessment as to the scope and severity of deficits among all individuals remains challenging."
And:
"The authors also raise the possibility of mass psychogenic illness but seem to dismiss it on the grounds that most of the affected individuals were motivated to return to work as soon as possible. However, it should be emphasized that in psychogenic (functional) illness (rather than malingering), individuals are not consciously motivated by primary and secondary gain." My money is on mass psychogenic illness. What gain is there for the Cubans in doing this?
4
During the Vietnam war I was in the Air Force from 1967 to 1971. I worked on B52’s, specifically radar jamming equipment called Electronic Countermeasures (ECM). I worked the flight line installing and testing very powerful transmitters and also in the shop repairing/testing these transmitters. I have had some strange illnesses over the years that no private or VA doctors agreed with me that was related to my illness. I have always wondered if there was a link to this. After reading this article I am not surprised that these mysterious symptoms are related to very powerful microwaves.
15
NOTHING... I mean NOTHING... happens in Cuba without the top guys knowing about it. There are "block watchers" over the entire country. So, no one can move into a neighborhood or do anything unusual in a neighborhood without the government being able to find out about it.
So, if microwaves are being used, the Cubans know all about it. Period.
208
@PhilipJames Yes, and so do we, in all likelihood. However, our government, like theirs, cannot simply acknowledge that to we, ordinary, citizens. Too, there seem to be good applications for this "cochlear bypassing" (if that is what it is) technology I would think, such as for those with hearing problems. Eventually, most governments will be entirely able to control the thoughts and actions of its citizens; to say nothing of the increasing number of "robotic citizens".
7
@PhilipJames - the "block watchers" are generally looking at the behavior of regular people, especially non-party members. Similar organizations provide surveillance of the coastline and other places vulnerable to invasion. I don't have the intuition that the Cuba is responsible for the attack - but I'm not sure what CDRs, block-watchers, etc. have to do with sussing out high-level sabotage cabals playing at geopolitics.
3
@PhilipJames Seems the Cuban govt might not have been fully apprised of what was in the van(s), or what some "dish" in a van was about. Easy enough for the Russians to say it's to communicate to their ship in the harbor, and the Cubans may have known the Russians were in a van "surveiling" US diplomats, but not known there were microwave experiments going on. It's hard for me to see how they'd have wanted a rupture; Putin wants us ruptured from everyone. Based on dpaqcluck below, surprising we didn't have wire mesh in all the embassy walls.
4
The most edifying and frightening concept in this article is that microwaves can be used to alter and harm human behavior. Soon, any damn fool or terrorist will be able to point a microwave "gun", and shut down a city's computers, or kill many people from low-audio acoustic waves.
Condensed and focused microwaves can jam the electronics on an airplane, causing it to crash. America's Cold War "Harp" microwave system was designed to detect incoming ICBM's, but it is now being used to learn how to modify weather patterns.
It would be great if all microwave use was beneficial, but obviously, it is not. While the Genie is out of the bottle on this one, I hope that there is serious Governmental regulation on the research and deployment of microwave weapons and tools.
160
@W.Wolfe Its already happening, and to American citizens! Google "targeted individuals" and enjoy the deep and frightening rabbit hole. Our own government has gone rogue. These weapons are torture. They are invisible and cause real pain. Visit this guys reddit page I learned so much reading his stuff but its all over the internet. People all reporting the same exact symptoms. Of course they would want you thinking that they are crazy but that logically would make no sense as you can read and watch literally thousands of different accounts describing more or less the same exact weaponry.
5
@W.Wolfe I thought harp was to modify the ionosphere to make it easier or harder to reflect radiowaves off the ionosphere. Harp does looks like a giant interferometer which should be able to send very narrow and intense signals with pinpoint accuracy. That seems like it would also be useful for long distance communication. It is absolutely not a time machine.
Religion can also can be used to alter and harm human behavior. Much less expensive, and far more insidious effects. Need evidence? Ask your local Catholic priest, evangelical pastor, or even your average Trump loving Republican voter.
2
Gives a lot of validity to the claims of Aaron Alexis and Myron May, not that their actions were in any way excusable.
Then you think about all the testimonies on youtube of people who committed suicide, claiming they were being "fried" by non-lethal weapons...people who claim they were being attacked covertly, including stalking via spy apps like Spyzie...
All the victims who were ignored... shame
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
5
Interesting article. I worked in Moscow on a joint venture from 2010 to 2017. Our Russian partners really did not want any westerners on the project, but certainly wanted the money from their western partners. Anyway, in 2011 I started getting vertigo & nausea attacks. Never had them in my life. I thought perhaps I had cardio problems, so I went to a prominent Russian Cardiologist, who had studied with Dr. Debakey in Houston. Heart problems were ruled out. I went to a Western Dr. who diagnosis was vertigo. Interesting, when I returned to work the General Director, who was a Russian, suggested I retire and return to the USA. I stayed on, and after 3 months the vertigo & nausea disappeared & has never returned. After reading this article I wonder if I was part of an experiment.
622
@Rod
Vertigo and nausea are symptoms of an inner ear infection, usually accompanied by stuffiness and strange sensations in your ear. The vertigo & accompanying nausea can strike out of the blue and knock you to the floor. Unpleasant but not mysterious. Any internist can diagnose it.
@Rod
Very true
It happens in USA too as a hidden torture
It causes many health issues, all complains about it we’re denied
2
@Rod
there are many people who never leave the US who develop transient attacks of vertigo and nausea for no apparent reason. Perhaps you believe the Russians or someone else is experimenting on us here.
Microwave assaults involving Russia have been going on since the 70's. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/30/archives/soviet-halts-microwaves-aime...
135
@West Coast Best Coast if anyone follows up, that truncated link completes as "aimed-at-us-embassy.html"
1
"a N.S.A. client of his who traveled there watched in disbelief as his nervous system later unraveled, "
Where is the there the client traveled to ?
The Russian labs?
2
If microwaves was the main suspect and the US government has known about their potential for this type of application, why have not they outfitted diplomatic missions with microwave detectors?
Personal microwave dosimeters exist that staff could wear on the body, and why not deploy caps or helmets with metal wire gratings inside as shielding? Why does it take so long to come up with countermeasures, if the most plausible culprit has been identified? Or is it already happening under the shroud of secrecy? How about examining CCTV footage for suspicious vans parked outside at the time of the incidents?
5
Does this mean US diplomats will now be issued aluminum foil hats for protection? Could this be the reason for Trump’s aluminum tariffs??
4
Q: what is the closest anybody could get to one of the affected with a columnated maser - with pinpoint aim at the head of the “victim “ who must be in the direct line of sight, without anybody noticing the equipment or radio signals one would expect our government to look for during a (presumed) regular sweep for bugs, including external signals like those that powered the USSR’s “Great Seal” bug hidden in a gift to a US ambassador.
Simply put, there were no microwave attacks because, outside of a lab, at distances more than a yard, it cannot be done.
In the early 1960s, both the US and USSR were trying to weaponize non-existent ‘ESP’ and other trash science too.
After spending huge amounts of money and time, they found there were no human ‘psys’, and no way to shoot disabling beams of microwaves in the real world. Read the open CIA MK-ULTRA reports.
This is most likely a case of mass hysteria than science fiction double-feature weaponry. Or ...
Ergot poisoning - deliberate or accidental.
The natural products of rye fungus is a hallucinogen/vasoconstrictor used in small doses to stop migraines
It causes nasty hallucinations - auditory and, in extreme cases visual, on top of depression and anxiety - why it never became a recreational drug, despite ease of production.
It’s the prime suspect behind many witch trials.
It doesn’t leave a chemical trace in victims for long.
THIS could produce the symptoms reported quite easily. No Rocky Horror weapons needed.
6
The use of microwaves for this purpose was known long before Frey; in Herge's 1954's The Caculus Affair it was a central plot point; variations of this were repeated in some of his later books as well. Like much destructive technology, it was first developed by the Nazi's (again, according to The Caculus Affair, which cites an actual book that now sells for thousands of dollars on Ebay).
1
“...microwave arms that could invisibly beam...even spoken words into people’s heads”
Apparently the Russians have already mastered this technology....perhaps it should be called “The Hannity Effect.”
31
Aha! Now the truth will come out! That Great Enemy of the People, the Democratic Party, has been aiming microwaves at the Oval Office. Sad...
3
This is a surprise? Is our counter/ELINT really that bad?
Read the ebook, "I'm In OZ" if you want to be substantiated.
These crippling attacks on Americans cannot go unpunished. Payback must be as well planned as these attacks, more so.
1
I think the upshot of this article is our government is treating us like mushrooms.They disclose things like this in dribs and drabs and only when it suits their purpose.
How many of us knew the Russians cancelled $30 billion in Cuban debt in 2014? How may of us knew "Moscow and Havana grew so close that in late 2016, the two nations signed a sweeping pact on defense and technology cooperation."? Maybe I'm not paying close enough attention.
I don't watch television news, but I do read both the NY Times and the Washington Post. I would think such stories would have been headline news. Viewed in today's political climate, the rapprochement between Cuba and Russia is especially disturbing. What's next? Nuclear missiles 90 miles off the Florida coast?
8
“The microwave idea teems with unanswered questions. Who fired the beams? The Russian government? The Cuban government? A rogue Cuban faction sympathetic to Moscow? And, if so, where did the attackers get the unconventional arms?”
Um, what about China? Does everything have to be Russia now?
Many schizophreniacs say they hear voices inside their heads, and say extraterrestrial creatures or foreign agencies are beaming those in. Perhaps they have been correct all along?
Has anybody tested foil hats as a treatment for schizophrenia?
3
Not "weapons." Eavesdroppping.
They beam strong microwaves at little tadpole shaped passive devices.
The tadpoles are hidden in drywall and furniture. One in Moscow tucked in a wooden carved eagle given to the ambassador as a gift.
The front of the tadpole collects sound; the back tail wiggles in the microwave stream. The microwaves are picked up on the other side and translated back into sound.
Because the little tadpoles are completely passive, no battery, no electricity, no radio wave signature, they are virtually impossible to detect.
But microwaves powerful enough to beam through the building and pick up the wriggling tadole signals and then out the other side are, as is mandfest, detrimental to human health.
13
Russia has been in Cuba for awhile , just saying.
6
Okay . . .
So now it seems that those conspiracy "paranoids”, pseudoscience "weirdos", and “delusional” street-corner panhandlers in the 1980s — the ones who told us they lined their hats with aluminum foil to deflect mind control massages beamed from the “mothership" — were really on to something?
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” – Mark Twain
6
People have been complaining of "gang stalking" for years but their cries have been ignored or they were written off as delusional... I feel so bad for all the people who have been suffering from these attacks and ignored, those who leave their testimonials on youtube before killing themselves... what a terrible, tragic way to die.
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
3
Oh no. Not the darlings of Latin America. Castro’s government is a by product of the KGB. Most were trained in Russia. They are very adept at controlling their people through violence and terror. They just have good PR in the US. This is a horrible crime and should be a reason to close our embassy.
2
Perhaps someone is beaming microwaves at our President, which would explain his ever more bizarre behavior.
2
"I've got Putin."
1
The U.S. Government has been involved in practicing with electronic weapons on civilians for many decades now.
Multinational corporations are heavily involved, primarily because these experiments have a global scope.
I suspect that the targeting of U.S. embassy personnel in Cuba, China and Uzbekestan was probably carried out by multinational corporations, which have no loyalties to any particular government.
Thank you for this detailed and accurate preliminary report, to include the discussion centering on V2K (DoD's appellation, since censored, for voice-to-skull technologies).
Now please focus on the complaints of the many, many hundreds of U.S. citizens who claim to be targets of this type of weapons "testing."
There is no mystery to this, despite Mr. Frey's concluding surmisal.
3
In the conspiracy theory department, that sounds like Anatoly woke up in Moscow this morning and was told to blame it on multinational corporation’s to take the blame off Russia.
One of the State Department's original charges was that their employees had heard strange "chirping sounds."
The Cubans offered to cooperate in an investigation, but the State Department refused. So the Cubans did their own investigation, which included recording sounds around the embassy. According to Science magazine, the strange "chirping sounds" were Jamaican crickets.
I knew enough about electronics and medicine to know how little I know. I read the JAMA article and letters, and some of the other articles in scientific journals.
Something is accepted in science when experts agree. The experts don't agree that State Department employees are suffering an illness caused by anything the Cubans did deliberately. The State Department hasn't proven its case. There are simpler explanations.
But governments in general, and Republicans in particular, have often used pseudoscience for political ends, and this would give Trump an easy excuse to destroy another of Obama's accomplishments.
Which is more likely -- (1) that the Cubans create and deploy a mysterous weapon that baffles scientists, with no apparent benefit to them, that damages their diplomatic situation, or (2) that Trump would lie?
3
@Norman If I were to aim such a weapon at the enemy, one that made chirping noises, I would aim it at the enemy at the precise same time as when the birds and crickets were chirping. (Not that I would. Just saying.)
3
Another voice of reason. Thank you!
It would appear that the science uncovered by Mr. Frey is unambiguous and uncontested. Moreover, the science behind microwaves is simple, not a mystery.
The hard science, Physics, missing from discussions like this one allow the technology to acquire an aura of mystery and sorcery that doesn't exist.
Detection and countermeasures would be straightforward and not particularly expensive, although one can be sure that every discussion of that aspect is highly classified. But, in fact any physicist with a BS or an EE in communications could make a simple, and effective guess both at simple protection schemes and detectors to indicate the presence of microwave beams.
Microwaves can't get through continuous sheets of metal or metal screen. The metal mesh in our stucco house plus a galvanized metal roof rule out the use of cell phones inside. Right next to some windows reception is barely adequate because the window screens are fiberglass and not metal. In the front yard we get maximum reception.
Power levels are in the same range as next to a transmitting cell phone. Imagine the trivial ease of detecting the output of a cell phone when standing a few inches away, not miles away as for cell towers.
Implementation of protection and detection are simple. Possibly similar to the importance of having radiation detectors in areas where radiation weapons are suspected. But it must be implemented -- at a cost.
[A physics PhD.]
313
@dpaqcluck
"It would appear that the science uncovered by Mr. Frey is unambiguous and uncontested. "
In March, there was no mention of the possibility. Now it is "unambiguos and uncontested." Its propaganda.
@dpaqcluck - Well said. Back when this was happening a couple of years ago I was surprised that some of the relatively simple ways of blocking EM radiation weren't already included in any "interior decorating" processes and kept up in any subsequent maintenance checks in our embassies.
Microwaves, as you pointed out, are not difficult to handle with meshes or grills for reflection. Even if you couldn't create a sufficiently enclosed Fermi cage for full effect, you could make it very difficult to hit targets with a directed signal inside the structure.
[not yet a Physics PhD, but working on it]
2
@dpaqcluck
This is exactly what I was thinking. If our offices in hostile countries were enclosed in Faraday cages, no microwaves would come in and no antenna based communications would get out. It would be expensive and annoying, but it would do the job.
1
Suspicion must fall upon Russia:
Russia did turn to non-nuclear weapon research. Russia could not avoid blame if its new non-nuclear arms were deployed in Moscow, so it deployed in Cuba, where, coincidentally, it could disrupt budding peace ties between America and Cuba. When suspicions arose there, Russia switched deployment to China. There is proof Russia also attacked America's election system and is currently set up to cyberattack its grid, banks, etc.
Russia is a classic number one suspect: Weapon availability, opportunity, intent. It looks like war building.
If so, we can't have a Putin stooge as commander in chief.
434
@jr. Republicans did not want us to reconcile with Cuba either. The Republicans have a lot of ties with Russia these days.
5
@jr - I suspect China of malevolence independent of Russia, considering its agenda to overtake the US and the progress it has made in a few decades.
This technology has been worked on for years and tested non-consensually on the public. Despite a gag order, several Cuban embassy victims and civilians attacked prior to the embassy exposure, have reached out to me. They complained of all the same symptoms we’ve been seeing in the public in the US that we suspect are being subjected to experimentation. I stated from the beginning this would NOT turn out to be sonic weapons
14
All electromagnetic radiation has the characteristic of being detectable and record-able. I would assume that sensors are being developed and deployed at some of these locations.
390
@Mark D -- You'd hope, wouldn't you?
3
@Mark D of course it would be hard if not impossible to find out who was driving the van and the government that paid for the attack.
2
@Mark D - Wonder if a modern day version of the tinfoil hat would be any defense.
2
We were in the process of planning a trip to Cuba this autumn. Now I have second thoughts.
46
There would be no reason to target a tourist.
2
@RLW
Why? Noone has been targeting except for diplomatic staff. State just downgraded it's warning level on travel to Cuba to match that of Germany, Costa Rica, etc. It's a safe place for a tourist outside of accidents and theft/scams.
@RLW That would be a shame to not go as a tourist. Its a very unique experience -- the Cuban people are gracious, the history and culture are fascinating AND its a beautiful, beautiful island. Having been 4 x's since 2004, I'm ready to return. It feels safer as an ordinary American there than here in the U.S. -- no random gun violence and generally very low crime rate (thanks to a controlling dictatorship). Do go!
The DOD video shows a military weapon system deployed in a civilian situation - not for a SWAT application such as disabling a hostage taker behind plate glass, but for "crowd control." (To disperse protesters, simply target the leader, then any who remain.)
Tear gas, fire hoses and dogs, say hello to your new best friend.
4
I'm sorry, I'm not following why Russia would wish to sow disharmony between Cuba and the USA.
Though yes, kind of staggering to see the NY Times admitting to such weapons.
Now, I can think of parties that would want to sow discord between the USA-Russia-China. Nothing originating in Cuba though.
2
I have long suspected that the "attack" in Havana was somehow traceable to the Russians - it has all the earmarks of a KGB tactic. Whether or not the Cubans were involved is questionable, given the inevitable fissure the incident created between our nations at a time when it would have been fiscally advantageous for American/Cuban relationships to flourish. But for the Russians, it was an ideal time to divide us, especially with Trump entering the White House, eager to establish a close relationship with Putin, and itching to destroy Obama's legacy in every conceivable way.
243
My favorite Russian trick was to put a listening device into a US Eagle mounted on a picture board they gave to the US Embassy in Moscow.
I wonder what Putin has on our president?
3
This is an excellent article with detailed information. So putting the content aside, I just note that the first picture in the article show no less than 5 US Marines defending the Embassy with their backs to the public. How disgraceful.
2
The Soviet Union's Woodpecker radio signal, that really did sound like woodpecker, used to interfere with shortwave stations and was a major nuisance to ham radio operators. I am not sure what it was designed to do. Each knock could have contained encrypted information or act as a marker-barrier against anyone wanting using those particular radio frequencies. Knock, knock ... does anyone know for sure?
1
Putin once again acts the Bond villain. Soon he'll be strapping lasers to heads of dolphins and dropping dames into volcanos.
@Peter Stern
Well, the US Navy was doing some strange dolphin training out at Pt Loma in San Diego. No dames in volcanoes, tho'
who had more to gain from these wave attacks than those who NEVER want the U.S. and Cuba to become working partners or allies?
we were well on our way to normalizing relations w/ Cuba and this episode blocked that pathway.
2
It is highly unlikely that these symptoms are caused by mass hysteria. The microwave hypothesis is the best explanation that has been advanced thus far.
12
It seems appropriate that the US government will now have to issue tin foil hats. I look forward to seeing a cabinet meeting with all those present, properly fitted out. The president, course, will have to keep his head bare so he can continue to receive his daily agenda.
9
Thank you for in depth reporting NYT. Fascinating story
12
@Arthur Mullen
Actually, the Japanese worked to develop microwave weapons during WW2- with the idea of turning them into death rays against American troops to "cook them alive from within" (quoting WW2 Japanese documents). The Japanese never got the idea to work - as the basic physics of microwaves did not permit narrowing as a beam capable of machine-gun like mass killing.
If this isn’t more evidence that Trump is the Manchurian candidate and that we have some very high people in our congress secretly working with Putin then I just don’t know what to say.
When it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
3
Why does the Times report this science fiction drivel? Microwave weapons cause heat effects, as we already have tested on the microwave crowd control systems that were tested for afghanistan and Iraq for crowd control but were never deployed. They dont penetrate walls or any solid structure. Sonic cannons are usually very large and suffer from the same limitations. The most likely cause of these mysterious ilnesses is mass hysteria. There are no fantastic secret weapons that violate simple physics, they fall under the same category as the Nazi death rays and foo fighters.
4
@Ed
Well, it's makes good, sensational copy anyway.
I'm thanking everybody in the comments who have made this sane and rational response to what you quite rightly call "science fiction drivel"
Three comments so far.
Work involving microwave technology for defensive/offensive applications is not a recent development in our own military.
I know this for a fact, because I worked on such concepts myself, more than 30 years ago. My group was focused on using microwaves as a means to temporarily stun enemies who might be, for example, holding American hostages.
None of this is surprising - with the possible exception of seeing how rarely it’s actually been used.
250
Did it ever work?
No!
@retired physicist
I'm not a physicisit, but like many ordinary people I have long known that microwaves can be unhealthy, and that intermittent attempts have been made to weaponize them by the US and others. When I first read news reports about the embassy incidents, microwaves were the first thing that came to mind; I assumed that this possibility was being examined, and more definite news would soon surface. Why on earth did it take so long? Did journalists self-censor, or were they muzzled officially, or do we simply have newshounds who only know of microwaves as kitchen devices to reheat their coffee?
1
Is there equipment available to detect the presence of high-powered, sophisticated microwave transmissions?
5
@ClydeMallory
Years ago, Radio Shack stopped selling microwave leakage detectors that would show this stuff.
15
Most microwave oven dealers can supply a meter capable for detecting even the lowest-power microwave “leaks” for about $30.
Another reason to doubt thus “hypothetical” answer to a problem most likely caused by what modern medicine calls “hysteria”.
So maybe the guys with the aluminum hats were not so crazy after all?
5
@Ken
I was waiting for a post like yours, and I'm glad to see it.
If microwave radiation is responsible for the problems these people are having, then metal (or TINFOIL!!) hats would offer some protection.
1
Maybe those guys in the subway with the aluminum foil hats are not so crazy after all.
395
@DK Though, if the microwave hypothesis is correct, their heads might burst into flames!
1
@DK
I feel so bad now for the victims of these attacks who have been uploading their testimonials to youtube, claiming of "organized stalking" and that they were being attacked with "non lethal weapons"
People like Aaron Alexis and Myron May, though their actions were unforgivable, they should have been taken more seriously. It really is a brave new world.
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
3
@DK
I've never seen anyone on the subway wearing tinfoil hats. But in red states, not coincidentally on multiple levels, it's quite the thing.
(PS: it's a joke)
I feel sorry for the people who've been subjected to this. The article mentioned permanent effects. That's horrific.
1
But I thought Cuba was a great nation that just needed American trade to become our best buds again? Another foreign policy failure by Obama
2
Well done, Jon, it takes a lot of skill to misread the article so you can attack the best American president in 40 years. The piece makes very clear that suspicions are not directed at Cuba; they’re directed at Russia. You know, the country that’s kept the president you voted for on their payroll for the last 30 years. But of course even when they show you the documents proving that, you’ll say their fake. Just another conspiracy. Isn’t it interesting that your president imposed sanctions on Cuba, and fought all attempts to sanction Russia? What more do you need to know? But never mind, Hillary did it.
2
@Jon - Cuba wasn't behind it. Your buddies the Russians were.
The Times should have disclosed to its readers that Beatrice Golomb is a cardiologist with an undergraduate degree in physics, not a specialist in neurology. Additionally, her husband, neuroscientist Terry Sejnowski, is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neural Computation, which UCSD conveniently omitted from its press release.
8
@Kay,
plus the annual neuroscience meeting is coming up, where neuroscientists position themselves for funding.
1
Gee, judging from this article, the microwave explanation seems extremely probable. The phantom sound effects are a clear indicator. How could the initial report missed this? Because the CIA is doing the same thing? Or are they just that dumb?
3
What is the purpose of beaming microwaves into their heads?
1
Maybe all those folks wearing tin foil liners in their hats are on to something?
The US needs a contract with Reynolds Aluminum for foil helmets for White House and State Department personnel.
@Moxnix67
I've seen aluminum hats on ebay. They might even still make aluminum hardhats.
1
I've been trying to expose the American use of these weapons for thirty one years, and I'm damn glad to see this article. Now, ask the doctor's about receivers.
4
@Shakinspear: Please say more about receivers, shakinspear. You know more about these weapons than most of us.
I would imagine they changed the name of the effect to a technical name as it would not be taken seriously if people were "just referring to 'Freyed Nerves'. "
Most people's nerves are frayed enough, let alone subjected to the high degree of random microwave background from our communications, radar systems and microwave ovens if damaged or poorly constructed.
What is the possibility of the Embassy just being in a poor location with Comms beams nearby being reflected from other buildings, and unregulated 'pirate' systems working alongside of more regulated service. It may be happenstance that the concentration was such to be damaging at that location. stranger things have been known to happen.
But at the same time, it is Very Interesting to read just How Much we already know, and 'have known for decades', just how much microwaves can be used for planting suggestions and attempts at mind control: If you can Really MAKE voices happen in someone's head, you can be their devil and plain control them by driving them insane, literally with both brain damage and negative, damaging suggestion, attacks at self-image etc.
How many other people, nations, and actors, good and bad, are using this tech, is it part of Advertising? How does this match to music and microwave transmission? I used to get a single radio station in a single place in school, and friends could hear it, that was just FM, but our temporal lobes pick up microwave?
This is actually big news with huge implications.
4
This hypothetical story is a bit irresponsible and alarmist, given its highly speculative character. It even sounds a bit wild in terms of diplomatic rationale. The most interested actors here in disrupting the opening of relations are Cuban Americans who have traditionally opposed the opening of relations and immediately moved to take advantage of the sonic issue to push for recall of diplomatic personnel and detente. But the NYT in its delirious obsession with Putin manages to bring him into the story as well. Why would Putin want US to cut relations with Cuba?
This story begins to sound like the 1898 explosion of the "Maine". Remember the Maine? The conjured casus belli given by the US to declare war on Spain over Cuba. Nobody really knew what caused the explosion in the US ship docked in Havana harbor--an accident (the current theory), a Spanish act of aggression (as interpreted then), or a provocative act of some Cuban insurgents who wanted to push the US to intervene in their war of Independence against Spain.
And, here we go again... this story certainly keeps feeding the fire and the bellicose animus against Cuba--even if its conspiracy subtext is directed at the Soviet Union. The Chinese, or was it the Koreans, if I remember, recently underwent another of these sonic attacks according to this paper. How do they fit into this conspiracy theory? This is very close to irresponsible reporting.
6
The article speculates on Cuban or Russian involvement when it appears to me these particular incidents have Chinese written all over them. China is a major economic player in Cuba and, of course, the 2nd incident occurred in China itself.
157
Agreed. A Russian operation might have freer access within Cuba but China has tighter internal security. Far more difficult for a foreign agency to run an op within China itself.
of course, this raises the question about WHY they would take that chance within their own country? Arrogance that there would be no negative political consequences or that the Americans would not figure out the cause?
1
@Jeff- Absolutely. With Russian blessings as well.
2
@Jeff Russian military ships have been to Cuba several times in the past, so it is not a stretch to imagine they might have had something to do with messing with our embassy.
The video openly calls this weapon strategy "Active Denial". So there's no mystery about what it is, there's just active denial about its usage.
And the video clearly shows planned use against demonstrators in protests. I interpret the video as a threat, produced to scare demonstrators into not going to protests.
This is the kind of threat made during protests against the Vietnam War. "We're gonna use mace and pepper spray and even live bullets!"
The administration knows the people are against its policies and are likely to be marching in the streets even more than we already have so they are trying to scare off at least some of them.
4
Was the U.S. Navy not considering at one time a massive microwave array to be buried across the length and breadth of Michigan's Upper Peninsula? Supposedly, the array would secure and improve communications with the Navy's submarine fleet and be impenetrable to EMP in time of war. I don't believe the array was ever built. In addition to the vociferous environmental objections, most of the population in the U.P. were against it, but then most of them were against the Mackinac Bridge. So, go figure...
It wasn't microwaves, it was extremely low frequency (ELF) that can penetrate seawater, which makes it useful in communication with submarines. l
1
@gricheso
Thanks, you're right. Do you know if it was ever built?
1
good god this is not a feel good story, put the news in the top..I don't want to wade through some garbage to get what the report is about..??why, nyt, why??
1
I have vacationed in Cuba several times. Given their economic situation, I doubt very much they have the means, or even desire, to come up with psychotronic weapons. And I couldn't understand why the Cuban government would be actively harming diplomats from the U.S. until I read this article. Russia, of course, is responsible!
But why did Russia go after Canadian diplomats as well? Our relationship with Cuba has been friendly for years yet we too were attacked:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cuba-diplomats-embassy-1.4621992
Same symptoms, likely from the same cause, and there is no mention anywhere of any of the over 100 Russian diplomats in Cuba suffering the same symptoms.
One of the first things Puppet Trump did following his election is undo the great strides in reviving diplomatic relations with the Cuba. On Putin's orders I guess.
He erroneously comments on white farmers being murdered in South Africa, but can't even comment on. let alone condemn, having his own diplomats suffer permanent brain damage at the hands of his best buddy?
23
@Abruptly Biff --You state, "there is no mention anywhere of any of the over 100 Russian diplomats in Cuba suffering the same symptoms. " And you're right, I can find no mention of that anywhere. Are you saying you are aware of some Russian diplomats who were also afflicted? If so, where did you get that information? Thanks.
@Marjorie
Sorry if I didn't word that quite right. My point was that it doesn't appear as if the Russian diplomats in Cuba have been targeted - just the U.S. and Canadians.
We need microwave alarms for our diplomats and soldiers. They would sound if there is an attack.
The work spaces and homes of all diplomats need these alarms. Perhaps they should also have faraday cage sleeping quarters.
2
@Judy Suddenly the tinfoil hat crowd is not looking so funny, you know?
So the cell phone plot used in the Kingman movie to destroy humanity via a cell phone signal is not a far fetched SCI-FI story.
Why didn’t the article cover possible known protections, if any, against the Frey Effect?
If a microwave gun is produced, will the NRA demand protection of unfettered citizenry access to it under the Second Amendment?
10
@ClydeS Laser came about AFTER they built 'MASER' Microwave Amplification thru Stimulation Emission of Radiation...so they had microwave beams, coherent, like lasers, before they did it with visible spectrum laser.
So the Microwave Beam Weapon has been around for a long time.
2
Potential protection from any microwave attack would be to be inside a metal cage. Anything that blocks your cellphone reception.
But don't worry, this whole thing IS a far-fetched sci-fi story.
@B. Honest - Okay. Thanks. So it’s not on the NRA’s screen yet. Maybe there’s time for the yet to be Democratic controlled congress, post 2018 midterms, to pass a massive MASER ban.
Any possibility that there was radar nearby that swept the compound ?
2
Readers, these incidents occurred at diplomats' homes (where family members were affected), not at the embassies.
13
I’m guessing the right will blame Obama for normalizing relations with Cuba but IGNORE the fact that the problems began after Trump won the election. At the same time, the far right (with the help of far left Glenn Greenwald types) will HIGHLIGHT the fact that it happened after the election as evidence that the “deep state” launched the attacks in order to implicate Russia, which would validate their allegations of Russian aggression, thereby undermining the legitimacy of the Trump administration so that Hillary Clinton can continue trafficking children or something.
Time for all to start wearing aluminum foil hats...no kidding.
11
During WW2 a cousin of mine, who was in the air force ground crew, received a direct hit from the radar of an aircraft on the ground. Because of this trauma, he was in a coma for two days and later recovered. Twenty years later he died from cancer, which did not run in our family. The family always suspected that the cancer developed from this event.
10
@Leon Keer
Yes, microwave radiation causes cancer. Such transmitters were isolated in the 1970s--used for long distance phone calls in the USA.
Now, they're all over the place in as cell towers and WiFi points.
But missing be the mind effects.
The way radar (which is a form of microwaves) works is by inducing the surface on say the aircraft to transmit back a signal. It is not simple reflection.
2
Really? Even overpowered early RADAR systems - which were not small enough to put on planes, couldn’t have either effect.
I suggest your family file a records request to find out what really hit him.
The first aircraft-mounted radar was a post-war product - using microwave generators like the klystron tube at the heart of every microwave oven, and sensitive receivers unavailable in the ‘40s.
Those were post-war developments and cold-war research into things like MASERS - radio-frequency LASERS, supposed to become super-weapons - that failed.
If it were a microwave system powerful to put him in a coma, the post-war system would have probably generated enough heat to flash his brain to steam. Or, as UK Speculative Fiction writer Ian McDonald suggested “poodle in a microwave effect with a vengeance.”
Or at least brain damage capable of permanent, severe disability, but not a cause of cancer years later.
Microwaves do not contain enough energy to ionize the material they pass through. Only frequencies in the ultraviolet and above are sufficient to cause the DNA damage which leads to cancer. Which is why we wear sunscreen.
It would be simple and cheap to equip embassies and consulates with microwave or radio frequency detectors.
I have a consumer level book that has plans to construct a "moderately powered directional source of continuous adjustable high frequency acoustical shock waves". It says "caution must be used as exposure to most people causes pain, headache, nausea and extreme irritability." It further cautions that pointing it at the head or ears could result in ear damage.
There are other plans to create ultrasonic pain generators and pest control devices. I've read elsewhere how to make weapons from microwave ovens that would be effective through the walls of buildings. This isn't rocket science or classified information. It's probably ridiculously easy to make such weapons.
Anyone could be responsible for the attacks on our embassies. It could easily be someone like Antifa.
4
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus Or any neo Nazi group.
High frequency sound and low-frequency light are two quite different things.
Note: don’t believe everything you read: a 150 KW klystron tube from a microwave oven can be used to zap a computer through a thin wall. If you can keep it pointed at the same region of someone’s skin, within a yard, it can boil water below and cause an internal burn.
It cannot cause any of the effects mentioned in the story.
“But their diminutive size also enables tight focusing, as when dish antennas turn disorganized rays into concentrated beams.”
Almost but not quite. Actually dishes turn collimated rays into concentrated beams, they cannot concentrate diffuse or disorganized rays.
9
I've seen helmets suggested here a few times. I think the concern would be the potential for the head to end up between the transmitter and the helmet, causing the helmet to reflect additional energy into the brain. For a Faraday cage to be effective, you really need to be entirely enclosed.
Considering the localized nature of the attack, as documented by JAMA, "...phenomena appeared to be localized to a precise area, as individuals (n = 12, 57%) noted that after changing location, the sensation disappeared and the associated symptoms reduced," and the fact that a number of these attacks woke the diplomats from their sleep, a simple solution would be a mosquito net style Faraday cage around the bed. This seems to be far preferable to otherwise damaging our relations with the host country, which would appear to be the attackers intention, considering the identical attacks in China and Cuba.
12
Considering the "identical" attacks in Cuba and China, and the fact that these mysterious "weapons" seem to defy physics, I would suggest that the embassy staff are in fact suffering from psychogenic illness brought about by extreme paranoia.
A Faraday cage is a wrapping of metal mosque netting.
If you’ve ever looked at an old Bell System era telephone central office, you’ll notice mesh embedded in the windows - not to protect the glass from vandalism, but from an external electromagnetic pulse, that, in theory, could have damaged a crossbar switch, and could kill an ESS if someone left the doors open.
Better to use an old fashioned EMP (electro- magnetic pulse) gun rather than microwaves.
Dumping a couple of farads of supercapacitor would fo the trick these days, why new telco buildings are built like windowless concrete fortresses with screen embedded in the walls.
Won’t hurt a person unless s/he shorts the device through his/her own body- the voltage won’t get you, but the amperage sure will.
Along with knowledge of such weaponry should come the developing of something that can neutralize the effects of the waves. This also puts the jokes that were made about the microwave being used as a spy mechanism into a different light. https://www.thesouthafrican.com/trump-adviser-said-microwaves-were-used-...
I am very sorry to put it this way, but I hate ignorance.
The “weapon” cannot work, and the perfect shield for those afraid is indeed a Faraday cage, a tight-weave metal mesh “mosquito net going under the mattress as well as over.
All of known existence is simply particulate matter, resonating endlessly along a wave function?
Neat.
6
And the US itself was or was not operating any high power E/M communications systems in Havana, near the diplomats' offices?
And in an era when the US was liberalizing its relations to Cuba, we think Cuba might try something so nasty? Does this make sense?
12
Russian use of microwaves seems to go back a couple of years earlier to 1959.
NY Times archives: SOVIET RADIATION OF NIXON REPORTED, MAY 1, 1976, WASHINGTON, April 30 (AP) —Heavy radiation was discovered at the American Ambassador's residence in Moscow during Vice President Richard M. Nixon's visit there in 1959 but was halted after detection, according to two former Secret Service agents.
For long term exposure, a microwave "dosimeter" might be more appropriate than a simple detector alone. Both can be in the same very small wearable device. Certainly, these well known technologies are well within the capability of our CIA, NSA, or other government tech groups or contractors.
3
Additionally, the complaints didn't occur only in Cuba. They happened not long after, in China too.
I have no doubt at least in my mind that these communist nation's leaders were indeed commencing, covertly of course, instructions to their cyber/security experts to deploy these cyber weapons of radio-frequency radiation, and they were doing it simply because they could and because that is historically how communist nations behave. They do not like us and, sadly, we need to remind ourselves here in the developed world, that we cannot drop our guard when it applies to trusting them in business, commerce and basic policy.
This is also why I continue to distress over the decades we've managed to ramp up our business friendly status with China to the degree that we have. Communist nations are never, ever to be trusted as far as one can throw the diplomatic purse in one pitch.
Why our government refuses to acknowledge the microwave radiation culprit isn't lost on me. They're most likely not because it means admitting they dropped the ball keeping their diplomats safe in a unique diplomatic environment. Sort of sad.
17
@RLC You have reached a conclusion for which there does not seem to be sufficient evidence. Which nation might have the most to gain from creating rifts between Cuba, China and the U.S? Russia? It may well be that Cuba and China are not behind these attacks at all.
2
@C Spencer. Plenty of evidence- the ill-effects well documented by the victims. If our government wants to play dumb, for many reasons I can think of, that's even sadder. Doesn't even matter who initiated it, whether it's the Russians, Cuba or China. We should be taking their empty promises with a grain of salt. They are untrustworthy and should treat them as such.
1
@RLC
Of course it happened in China too! Why not, I guess ALL America's enemies have simultaneously developed mysterious and scientifically implausible weapons to surreptitiously attack embassy staff for no reason.
Or alternatively, it's nothing more than mass hysteria spreading around paranoid US embassy staff.
And we don’t have, or can’t defend against, these weapons because we just gave a trillion dollars to the top 1% in tax cuts.
23
@TheUglyTruth
Silly comment. We have triple what the Russians, Chinese and Cubans have. But unlike the aforementioned, we also have respect of human life.
Our response should be asymmetrical, aimed at the destruction of their satellites / weapons systems. As for the Cubans, just maintain the embargo.
@TheUglyTruth, didn't you see? Diplomats and other non-military gov't employees are going without raises again this year. Make a few more cuts to education and other social programs and we'll have those weapons in no time. AND the top 1% gets to keep their cash. Sorted.
There is no rational explanation why the Cubans would seek to sow chaos in US diplomatic relations with Cuba by using a covert weapon such as this because the Cubans would naturally deny such an act if they did such a thing precisely because it is a covert action. Denying the act would serve to undercut the antagonizing effects of the covert weapon.
For either the Russians or Cubans to attack us covertly then deny that they did so may frustrate, those in the US who want to normalize relations with Cuba, and those persons charged with diplomacy would, in all reasonableness, shake it off and continue with normalizing diplomatic relations not only because that is the ultimate goal, but also to say you can't drive us away in secret, you're going to have to come out and do it in the open.
However, those in the US who do not want to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba would jump at the opportunity -- any opportunity -- to revert back to antagonism, and so such a covert attack would be accepted if not appreciated for precipitating spite and mistrust. The question then arises who would have an interest in conducting a covert operation no one could find out about that would ostensibly be blamed on the host nation or its long-time benefactor and ally. The Cubans, by all accounts, want relations with Russia and the US, the Cubans would be angered and dismayed by Russia compromising its US relations, should Russia have done this, but there can be no doubt this benefits into Trump.
24
The other day, I was taking a walk around my neighborhood and upon passing certain houses angled just the right way relative to the sun, I experienced a lot of heat reflected from their windows; I mean it felt hotter than the direct sunlight.
Now I imagine diplomats have one thing in common: bullet proof windows at home. Is it possible that their windows themselves are transforming sun light into microwave radiation, either inadvertently or purposefully?!
2
@Rich
The degree to which you wish to give the benefit of the doubt to our adversaries is impressive, but misguided.
No one that I know would knowingly welcome brain damage from their windows.
Microwave radiation is far weaker and less dangerous than sunlight. Sunlight will actually give you radiation burns, as everybody knows. Microwaves won't and can't.
Up to the time Guglielmo Marconi created wireless systems using radio wave the Earth's electromagnetic spectrum was pristine. Eons of life evolved absent the disruptions and interference of microwaves and all modern radio wave technologies.
Slightly more than 100 years has passed since our EM environment was in this pristine state. And the pollution of airwaves has massively accelerated since WWII. We now live in a EM soup that is constantly agitated with every manner of communication devices. The only way to get away from them is to build yourself a Faraday Cage that creates a zone freed of all this interference.
The sheer amounts of money created by these technologies is a barrier to defend their use. What health and psychological problems have been created in tandem with the rise of radio and microwave tech? No real studies have been done to identify their long term downside.
Perhaps diseases like Guillain–Barré syndrome - in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the peripheral nerves and damages their myelin insulation - is just people's bodies reacting to these constant, long term disruptions.
Maybe EM disruption plays into the buildup of beta-amyloid plaque associated with Alzheimer’s. Like callouses building up on the foot when you walk. Your body adjusts to the constant friction to protect itself.
But we don't have a control group of families living in Faraday Cage-like houses to contrast with families exposed to the EM sewer we live in.
52
You make an excellent point by putting this in an evolutionary context. The electromagnetic fog you describe will never be voluntarily undone, so we have no way to really know whether or how it has affected us humans. If it is hurting us, we won't be able to see it. I don't lie awake thinking about such things, but your comment really does provide food for thought.
2
@medianone
But we don't have a control group of families living in Faraday Cage-like houses to contrast with families exposed to the EM sewer we live in.
No, but we do have very smart people with advanced degrees in physics who would be dismayed by such armchair “science” speculation.
1
So, this is serious and I feel for our diplomats who have been harmed.
But at the same time, I can't help think of all the tinfoil-hat types and how, guess what, actually the CIA _could_ be beaming voices into their heads! Great, just great. And this won't help us as right-wing nutcases are on the rise, it's just another half-true danger that they will spin into the second coming of Cthulhu.
Looking at a different angle, it makes me wonder, too, about all the cellphones we tote about, and the microwaves they send and receive. So-called ELF ("extremely low frequency") radiation was discarded as a serious worry some time ago, but now I wonder if we aren't all jangling our brains just a little bit with the microwaves directly. Hmmm, could that help explain everyone's addictive behavior to their little screens? We should be so lucky to have this excuse, but seriously, I wonder...
7
@Meta-Nihilist
ELFs were reduced as a concern because there was rapid fall off in intensity from some sources that worried people - like high power electric transmission lines. ( don't know if utilities did anything to reduce emissions from local street transformers) Electric blankets were wired differently to cancel out the effect ( but who is checking the imports?). I do wonder what all of the combined electro- effects are in homes now, with so many devices in use.
7
The story here is the disgusting arms research that our tax money is invested in. Now that germ warfare is banned, sonic psychological warfare seems like an alternative strategy sending voices, messages, and painful noises that produce neural and brain damage. An alternative weapon against foreign enemies that could be useful for many domestic purposes such as mob control. Charge sonal microwave instead of water hoses or tear gas against protesters.
Also, this sound like a real Manchurian candidate project.
23
The State Department -- whose motto, I like to say, is "Firmly Yielding" -- will never admit that its diplomats were the target of Chinese, Russian or Cuban microwave radiation attacks because to do so would require a US response, and that, in turn, would take spine.
32
The idea that someone can attack you, remotely from the street, quietly, cheaply is terrifying. Think of it, any person could shoot microwaves through walls into a building, a store, your house, etc. quietly microwaving your brain and body.
I’m glad, but almost surprised this isn’t more of a common thing.
10
@PNicholson Microwaves are a LARGE band of frequencies. Don't associate them with just microwave ovens. These are usually space based, satellite weapons or large, power hungry devices.
Originally designed to kill the electronics of missiles fired from the ground, or to kill other satellites. These weapons have been re-purposed to attack people.
2
@PNicholson
Well in June, the news was abuzz with a new technology out of MIT that can use high density microwaves to "see" through walls. Is was celebrated for national security that if our country rolls out 5G antennae across the nation, then this camera could see into people's homes. I'm not concerned about someone seeing an Xray version of me putter about my kitchen, but it terrifies me what these microwaves are doing to my children. Rats raised in a normal level of 2G cell density were completely sterile by the 4th generation...
14
Why are you so terrified of microwaves, but not terrified of sunlight, which is immensely more powerful and dangerous?
About time this was written. Look into remote television studio link transmitters. They are high power microwave radios with a long tube directing microwave energy like a gun.
8
So, yet another attack on our country. Yet 30-40% — basically Trump’s base — see nothing wrong with colluding with, or conspiring with, a foe. They now mouth Trump’s /Fox “news’” words (is there a difference?) and say it’s good to talk to Russia, it’s good to get close. Such saps. The Republican Party can never again claim to be the party that makes us secure. Just like they’ll never again be the party of law and order.
26
well said!
The oddest part of this “attack” is that no affected person has come forward to be interviewed, and no one ever seems to be named in an article. The timing of the “attack”, at the start of the current administration (sic), was suspect to begin with, but the invisibility of the victims continues to make for strange reports about no one.
It’s wonderful that all these microwave experts suddenly realize that an Amana with the door off was used to aim brain damage from across the plaza in front of the embasssy, and through all the steel and stone that make up the exterior of the building, but where are the damaged people?
15
spooky actions at a distance?
5
Microwaves towers for cell phones might explain why people who claim to be morally upright Americans voted for trump. They didn't understand the grunts he was making.
29
Very funny. Or is it a rational explanation?
The article doesn't mention detectors even once. And the only reference to measurement is in this sentence:
"A man who measured radar signals at a nearby G.E. facility ..."
Radars use microwaves, and military aircraft may be equipped with such detectors, so there is certainly technology available to investigate the problem.
The Wikipedia article titled "Radar warning receiver" has more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_warning_receiver
7
It doesn't mention detectors, it doesn't mention the obvious precautions you could take, it doesn't mention all the scientists who say that a microwave attack of this nature is scientifically implausible and it doesn't mention that many experts believe this is in fact a case of mass hysteria.
This seems like a very plausible explanation. It seems to me that if we can shield ourselves from the radiation from our microwave ovens, we could shield our diplomats from microwave radiation in their sleeping quarters.
16
I've been following this story since the injured diplomats' conditions were first reported. Attacking diplomats and families is just particularly horrifying. And I keep thinking of the SF stories I read as a child - those fictional weapons invented by Asimov and Heinlein now become real.
And how many watched the "Active Denial Video"? A few times the the narrator comments that this can be used for "crowd control" ... So much for storming the Bastille.
17
@Jenny Marie
The State Department cares little for its employees, and thus typically waits for disaster to strike before taking preemptive protective measures. This is a perfect example.
2
@Jenny Marie
The Active Denial Video was chilling. It can be used to disable people who are simply exercising a right to demonstrate as easily as someone who is actually an enemy.
It claims the effect goes away, but the DOD has never been too picky about exposing people -even its own - to terrible long term effects.
It's as we are finding with drones: once they're out there, anyone can use them. For anything.
4
@Jenny Marie as the spouse of a diplomat, I've been terrified since our first child was born 14 years ago. Foreign Service kids are easy targets since unlike military kids, they usually go to local schools and live in regular neighborhoods instead of a heavily guarded base. We were stationed in Cuba a few years before the attacks, but I'll be honest--there are alot of things that worry me more than secret brains-scrambling weapons. Bosnia still has landmines, for example--and then there's always good old fashioned terrorist attacks to keep me up at night...
1
Bill— you might also mention that the Russians beamed microwaves at the US embassy in Moscow in 1971. We never determined whether it was against personnel or to activate listening devices buried in the walls of the building.
6
In the interests of making lemonade:
They mentioned even the deaf can "hear" these signals. I wonder if there is a positive here: a new method of communication for the deaf? I'd imagine it would take a lot of research to find a way to do this safely and with enough sensitivity. But perhaps some day a device could deliver to the deaf warnings at road crossings about oncoming traffic, audiobooks, the dialog in movies, school lectures, etc.
7
Fascinating article, thank you. Our diplomatic personnel are 'out there' for all of us, and I would hope our government gives those afflicted by these attacks all the support possible. I do think it's very premature to be speculating on the sources and reasons for what's going on. Given the simplicity of the methods, the perpetrator could be someone without any official sanction at all. At least we now know there was some reason behind the Trump administration's actions against Cuba, and not just a desire to reorder President Obama's policy.
3
Directed or focused microwave energy can be reduced or eliminated by Faraday cage type technology. It can also be detected by commonly available radio spectrum analysis equipment. A prolonged exposure or attack can be source pinpointed by radio direction finder technology. I can only assume these investigative techniques were used by our agencies.
24
A microwave source seems the most reasonable. Aren't there instruments that can certify the presence of such phenomena. Stop the guesswork.
It seems that security of our diplomatic personnel will have to expand to surveilling the peripheries of diplomatic residences. Compounds for diplomats with nothing around them for a mile radius.
RUSSIA is written all over this. At a time when the U.S. President is a Russian stooge. Even if Trump's corrupt connections to Russia and all of the kompromat that they have on him are revealed, what next?
It is difficult to look to the horizons and not see catastrophic storms.
11
Like blinding lasers, directed microwave energy is another weapon in the arsenal of the next war. Or civil war.
Are people ready for the concept of Vx being delivered in a swarm of microdrones for target assassinations?
4
The article asks "Who fired the beams? The Russian government? The Cuban government? A rogue Cuban faction sympathetic to Moscow?" but it fails to list a third possibility, which is that the beams could have been fired by Cuban anti-communists (see Bay of Pigs Invasion). There are members of that group who at least have a good reason for doing so, as many Cuban anti-communists have been critical of the warming relations between Cuba and the US.
I'm not accusing anyone of anything, however I feel that the article is not balanced if it leaves out a major possibility.
5
@Timothy True. There are also US elements that would love to break up any US/Cuba rapport, if it comes to that. Could they manage something like this? If we don't know what "something like this" actually is, that remains a question.
6
How would microwaves be delivered? A truck, antenna atop, making circles around US embassy? No too obvious. A truck, antenna atop, at a radius of 2 city blocks. Microwave easily pass through --- wait I can't put metal in my microwave oven. A truck, antenna atop, at a radius of 2 city blocks with a "look" at embassy that is unobstructed by anything metallic, re-bar in adjacent buildings? Huh!
@RAG
How about a van with plastic panels that are transparent to microwaves, with an antenna inside. This would look just like any other van once it was painted.
1
A militarized physical attack on United States officials by a foreign adversary.
I can imagine what Ronald Reagan's response would be, and it would be swift and definitive.
But we have a house and senate controlled by people who bear little resemblance to Ronald Reagan.
We have a republican president who bears little resemblance to any past President of the United States or, for that matter, any functional, reasonable, intelligent, human being.
How will Trump respond? He would like to blame Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Maybe he will. But he will not blame Vladimir Putin who has increased relations with Cuba since taking power. That would be in keeping with his nostalgic fondness for a rebirth of the Soviet Union.
If we were not rendered impotent by the rule of law, a fact that Trump and his republican enablers take full advantage of, our president would have been led out of the oval office in handcuffs by now. Instead we watch as our country crumbles in slow motion.
Maybe Putin will invite Trump to the massive war games they plan to hold with China next month. It would be an opportunity to bring his "asset" home. Out of harms way?
13
"Last month, JAMA ran four letters critical of the March study, some faulting the report for ruling out mass hysteria."
The last term surely smells of a Russian effort to discredit the findings:
"hysteria" is a signature word of the Russian propaganda, among others like "paranoia", "provocation", or "russophobia", used when Russia is found out or accused of something it doesn't want to admit.
20
Now we need to add Faraday cage helmets for our diplomatic personnel in addition to bullet proof vests, and other 007 devices. Radiation detectors - nuclear and microwave - should be de rigueur.
4
Maybe Russian microwave weapons pointed at Trump's head over the years explains his behavior.
I'm only half-joking...if this hypothesis turns out to be true, is it that far-fetched as an explanation for Trump's derangement?
13
@Tom
had similar thoughts. egad!
Or more probable, those with Trump Derangement Syndrome...
Surprised the embassies don't have shielding such as radio-opaque gyproc as part of routine embassey and residence building standards. They should check all their own electronic equipment as this may be the source of the problem.
1
@FreddieBeach If I remember right, the attacks didn't take place in the embassy, but in hotel rooms and apartments here and there in the area. One of the aspects people were wondering about was that the equipment, if there was any, would have to be portable.
2
What do you know....another Trump connection benefitting Russia. The November elections can’t come soon enough. We need changes now.
17
isn't this too much of stretch of the imagination from paranoia? what are those supposedly culprits will gain from attack? are they dumb enough to try on our diplomats, from one of most sophisticated, scrutinize people?. they could easily try on the unfortunate people such as the prisoner or own commoner(albeit inhuman behavior) instead of the diplomat from the foreign country especially the US? are they so dumb to try this new weapon, if you want to call it, against the foreign diplomats? if this device is so small and able to carry in a car, they could smuggle to the Capitol Hills and try to microwave against our politicians and the President and control their mindset to be civilized and for the people(for the sake of helping the US for a change) instead of the current merry-go-round fiasco. this will give another bravado to set up another division of mind control army in addition to the Space Army to waste another taxpayers money.
I don't mean to summons the lunatic fringe but Nikola Tesla
was the actual discoverer of what he called Extra Low Frequency Waves back in 1899 at his Colorado Springs Laboratory. Though disparaged by hard science (as typified below from a Rational Wiki link) his subseuent claims eerily anticipate this entire article, while the fact that "The Russians" got a jump on these technologies has been bandied about in "hard" and "soft" science circles for decades.
Note: the caustic tone of the following is not mine nor does it reflect my high opinon of Nikola Tesla.
"So-called targeted Individuals also blame ELF for a host of imagined problems including violent behavior, cramps, seizures, voices, and induced dreams, which they claim are somehow simultaneously caused by microwaves."
Tad Wise
author of the biogaphical novel TESLA
9
@Tad Wise It is impossible to stealthily focus ELF EM waves because of their huge wavelengths, which would require enormous directional antennas, with elements having dimensions measured in significant fractions of a mile. Even with such antennas, the focus would still be "blurry."
1
It may be time to develop tinfoil hats for our diplomats and other government personnel overseas.
On a more serious note, physical attacks on Americans, particularly diplomats, by foreign adversaries is a very serious matter. It’s worthy of diplomatic expulsions and hefty sanctions.
For some reason, I doubt Trump would be inclined to sign off if it upsets his friends, Putin and Xie.
4
".... Dr. Frey says he doubts the case will be solved anytime soon.". Of course not. It's just one more way trump is tearing us down. The more he does, Putin lessens his Russian debt. Just like with Cuba. Putin re establishes his cubin ties, and the debt Cuba owes is dropped.
6
Can a metal screen worn on the head like a helmet shileld the brain if an attack is felt or detected?
It could be made light and cheap.
2
lots of people go around with aluminum foil yarmulkas, but there is little scientific evidence of their efficacy against terrestrial opponents. they are mostly effective against Venusian mind control beams, which work on an entirely different principle.
on a lighter note, if the majority of the victims were in US diplomatic installations abroad, in Communist countries with which we have somewhat fraught relationships, what are the chances the microwaves, if any, were leakage from our own equipment at these installations, and meant to be directed outgoing and not incoming?
Really great writing by William Broad on the technical aspects of this phenomenon as well as the political consequences.
It seams as if these weapons are difficult to detect, possibly being transported in common vans. As for the purpose of using them, the microwave weapons might just be experimental at this point. Clearly they have produced some data for the attackers.
Their effects are a lot like Russia's interference in our elections. There was a planned infiltration into U.S. social media, but no real, well-defined, expected result, other than chaos. It was an experiment that appears to have helped trump get elected, which does benefit the geopolitical aims of Russia, but probably exceeded Russian expectations.
Similarly for the Frey Effect attacks; the attackers can't know of any resulting planned result, other than chaos. Attacking embassy personnel has a fruitlessness about it. Countries are already constantly pulling their embassy personnel in various protests to the recalcitrant actions of their hosting countries.
One desired result might be to discourage U.S.-Cuban relations, as William writes here, but our relationship is already on a wing and a prayer. Russia's debt forgiveness does a far better job than microwaves.
Well, we can build Faraday cages around our embassies and their personnel's living quarters. It's much harder to deal with the deleterious effects of social media manipulation.
6
Microwaves at a power level sufficient to cause "brain-tissue injury" are easy to detect. Portable instruments are readily available for this purpose. For example, a simple commercial version can be bought from Radio Shack for under $10, for detecting leakage from a household microwave oven. These sorts of techniques are well known to every television broadcast engineer, airport radar technician and appliance repairman.
I suppose the real question is, why haven't these techniques been used in American embassies overseas? These facilities are routinely swept for listening devices, many of which operate in the microwave bands. For example, a standard Wi-fi operates at 2.4 or 5.8 Ghz -- both of which are microwave frequencies. I would also assume that these facilities are instrumented for continual monitoring of microwave emissions.
35
@W
Exactly! A recording detector with an alarm could have been easily deployed when people first began reporting symptoms. If they're not available, they could easily be developed by one of many companies that work in that field. That this wasn't done reveals a staggering lack of competence at the State Department and heads should roll.
2
@CCryder The equipment you suggest is readily available to the U.S. military, and so it is available the State Department. It is standard fare for any military deployment, where control of the RF spectrum is equal to the role of air superiority. If an adversary turns on a cell phone (a microwave emitter), electronic warfare surveillance equipment can automatically determine latitude and longitude and plot coordinates for an artillery or missile response. Just search the internet for "electronic-warfare aircraft", and you'll see dozens of examples of this exact technology.
The catch here is that electronic warfare is among the most secretive in the government sphere. Shame on them if they didn't use it. But the more likely scenario is that they didn't find anything, or else they would have said something. If the had found something, no secrets would have been divulged by announcing what they may have found, such as frequency, power levels and source of these emissions. In my opinion the most likely scenario is that there were no microwave emissions powerful enough to cause tissue damage.
3
Cell phone apps are also available, for free.
The tin foil hat wearers will eat this up.
I would imagine the microwave oven testers that can be bought for the price of a restaurant meal seem like the best way for a paranoid to address this threat. Even though the frequency is likely slightly different, the cheap detectors likely don’t have advanced notch filters to narrow the range.
Further into the future it seems likely that cell phones, which use the same frequencies, could have an background app that measures and records microwave levels over time.
The biggest mystery is why this explanation has not been considered until now. Trans Cranial Magnetic Stimulation has been shown to affect brain functioning with roughly similar frequencies so nobody should be surprised by this.
3
@Ted Flunderson - Perhaps the main reason why this explanation has not been considered until fairly recently is due to people dismissing it jokingly as “tinfoil hat paranoia“, despite the science that has long confirmed it. We flood our environment with a spectrum of radiation, ignoring and dismissing how it affects our body-minds, at our own peril.
6
@Ted Flunderson- Yes Ted, but the unavoidable fact is the tin foil hat set may ivery well have a point. Like Woody Allen said, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
1
The spectrum of radiation which we call "light". It's flooding into my environment through all the windows right now.
Cell phones use similar frequencies, and right next to the head. Perhaps they are not as strong, but they are far more frequent.
I'd like to see more discussion of "radio-frequency sickness" of the sort that has its own peer reviewed journal, and that is the basis of weapons development since the 1960's.
It is inconvenient, and might cause concerns about big money businesses. Those are just more reasons to examine it, not reasons to stay away from the subject.
I hope this comment is not dismissed as tin-foil-hat concern, not the subject itself. Sure, it could be abused like anti-vaxers go on with little real science, but there is some actual science here and it deserves discussion (not panic, not instant conclusions).
13
A home microwave cooker shields users from microwave energy by means of its metal-lined compartment, and the metal screen over the window. This raises the question of whether embassies and other sensitive locations could be similarly shielded from this threat, perhaps by using a specially designed metal screen over the windows, floors, walls, etc. Don't laugh, but something as simple as an aluminum-foil hat might offer some protection.
5
@Dan Frazier - Put your cell phone inside the microwave oven, and then call it from another phone. Your cell phone will ring, inside that “shielded” oven.
6
Perhaps it's too much to ask, but couldn't the article have listed some of the ways scientists suggest people might protect themselves from microwave beams? Or do we have to rely on Google to answer that question?
39
Water is great at absorbing microwaves, so take long baths or just hang out in the pool more.
Even better, broad spectrum microwave radiation reflection is 97% for aluminum, so an aluminum foil-lined had would work well. Source: https://is.gd/uUbKZ0
But don’t use tin! Tin is absorptive.
22
@Stacy Prowell, thank you!
1
One could also conclude a possible self inflicted wound due to the low tech use of microwave emitters used inside these embassy offices for security and motion detection. If poorly placed relative to where human heads might travel, a person might receive as much as 10,000 times the radiation exposure as planned. This is a far more likely scenario than the Russian bogey man did it, Further, the Canadians are claiming their embassy was effected as well.
7
@Roy , Did you note that the article described attacks in homes— with a van seen speeding away after one incident?
12
Long ago, when much younger, after reading about being able to hear radio signals directly, I experimented with exposing my head to RF. What little direct hearing of radio frequency energy I observed was probably due to heating of auditory tissue. Thus I am not inclined to believe the "direct hearing of Cuban signals" stories.
1
And yet knowing all this about the powers of microwave on the human brain, we are allowing the communications (phone etc) industry to place microwave stations every 500 feet to run our dinner-warmers, baby watchers, police listeners, etc, in the so-called 5G Rollout, which will expose huge parts of the population to low frequency microwaves 24/7. The more sensitive among us will suffer many of the effects mentioned in this article. So why is the 5G rollout being pushed through without any public comment allowed?
129
@Jill M
Cell towers are not aiming focused beams of microwaves at your body.
8
@Jill M - Money, pure and simple.
1
@Disembodied Internet Voice
Sometimes they do if you live near a cell tower.
Mysterious and dramatic occurrences such as these will inevitably attract many theories, as do SIDS and the UFO phenomenon. All will appear credible to general observers when proposed by expects in the field. Each will be promoted by those experts, who would certainly think of it quickly as a potential explanation and who may have an interest in the attention that it focuses on their specialty.
And, of course, the journalist who first publicizes the explanation that is eventually accepted will contribute to his own reputation for acuteness.
5
@ERP -- These reasonable concerns for hype and abuse of the topic are best met by responsible discussion, preferably before they pick up speed on their own.
Presumably these buildings are filled with all sorts of sophisticated communications equipment. Is it possible that a microwave transmitter of our own is inadvertantly doing this ? I'll admit far fetched, but I haven't seen it discussed or dismissed, and the common thread is this is happening on US embassy properties, which might have similar equipment set ups in high risk countries.
16
@Jim Z
I was thinking the same thing. And it is a fact that many U.S. embassies, including the Cuban one, employ jamming technology to prevent unfriendly governments form listening in. It is not so far-fetched to believe that some of that jamming might have harmed U.S. personnel, presumably unintentionally. It's not impossible that those responsible for it might have realized it later but covered up that knowledge, allowing the blame to be put on Cubans and Russians instead.
I also wonder if a very thin layer of metal, applied around the head, might prevent microwave effects on people, or at least the most susceptible people. One could envision such a simple device, let's call it a "hat," being made of tin foil, even by lone individuals seeking to silence the voices beamed into their heads...
6
@Scott Baker-- Perhaps it can be cumulative, so that the background use made people more vulnerable to attack.
@Jim
Is there actually such a thing as a "microwave transmitter?"
It was the late 1960s. As a young physicist, working in my first job in the research division of a large American corporation, I was asked to look into the research of Dr. Vladimir Gavreau. Gavreau had studied possible physiological effects of what he described as focused infrasound. He went so far as to postulate that such effects do exist and could be weaponised. At the time, I confess, I thought the ideas were rather cranky. But now, reading this latest article, I begin to wonder . . .
44
Exposure to microwave radiation may have well been coincidental,and not intended or desired. Microwaves can be used to power devices such as "bugs", and that has been known and shown for many decades. The problem with that use of microwaves is that tissues in living organisms, including us, absorb microwaves quite well, and with possible untoward effects. I wonder if our embassies and the personnel's living quarters have detectors for microwave radiation; if not, they are not expensive.
64
@Pete in Downtown
I wonder if we use microwaves in our embassies and whether we misused them.
I would have liked to have heard that we do not use them or that a mistake has been ruled out.
Many of the incidents took place in living quarters, not at an embassy. That would seem to rule out your worry.
2
@Pete in Downtown But this incident seems to have targeted Embassy personnel. No one else reported these effects.
1
Maybe the Trump administration did this to the embassy in order to derail US-Cuban relations. A little out-there, I know, but I wouldn't put it past them.
69
@Liz. My immediate thought at the time was that the Russians were responsible and their motivation was to disrupt the Obama administration’s efforts at normalizing US/Cuba relations. I’m certain that Putin could not have been very happy at the prospect of losing an old client state to the US sphere of influence.
139
@Mesmo -- Russians? The other place that it happened was in China, and not in areas of China frequented by Russians or Western offices.
Why would the Russians do it in only two places, Cuba and more remote areas of China?
Would China mess with our diplomacy, or push back at our Monroe Doctrine?
3
we'll never know for sure but absolutely the US govt. is on the short list of supsects as well. The second paragraph of the article should make that clear.
If memory serves me correctly there was speculation that was also a problem in Moscow in the 50's with the Great Seal Bug.
6
The Great Seal had a passive radiating device inside. Sound vibrations would cause a thin metal plate mounted on a tuned chamber (tuned for a specific radio frequency: resonant to that frequency) to flex which changed the electrical characteristics (the resonance) of the device. Those changes caused a radio signal aimed at it to be changed a tiny bit (modulated) when it was reflected back to a receiving device. When the returned, modulated, radio wave was demodulated, the voices would be heard. That method was/is a form of frequency modulation (FM) and is still used today to detect motion, etc..
10
@Mark - didn't the Russians also deploy a device called "The Woodpecker" to beam EM waves at the U.S.?
If I remember my physics correctly, a Faraday cage, of copper mesh surrounding a room or building would keep signals from outside getting in and signals from inside getting out. I would have though this would be standard procedure in a building such as an embassy.
333
Me-opines: "Money, money, money, money, ... MONEY!" (from the movie score) plus the state of denial that stuff like that could/would happen, are, in my opinion, the causes of not having a Faraday Shield or other means of detection and repelling such energies built into embassies and diplomats' residences. Of course there would need to be additional protections for when the individual(s) are in public spaces.
23
@stan continople That embassy was officially closed, with just a skeleton crew to keep the facility maintained. I saw it myself a few years ago while visiting before the brief "opening" of Cuba during Obama's final term. I'm sure any modernization of the security hasn't been happening in the last fifty years. It was completely vulnerable.
41
@stan continople Yup - They don't have to be copper, can be something cheaper and lighter like aluminum. They do have to be grounded.
Small mesh cages, maybe like body bags, could be built and deployed very cheaply, at least for testing purposes. It's a mystery why this should remain a mystery.
9
For anyone who read the New Yorker during the 1970s (or attended the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism during that era) couldn't help, when reading this article, but think of Paul Brodeur, who was far ahead of his time in warning of the dangers of microwave radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Brodeur
72
@Doug Hill
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.8056/full/
Please read this for a bit of nuance and some pretty heavy scientific criticism of Paul Brodeur. Basically there is very likely no there. there. An epidemilogical association is not evidence of cause and effect, but it sure does stir up fear.
2
Why is there no discussion of diplomatic personnel wearing microwave detectors?
104
I agree- this article completely ignores mitigation and security
6
Me-a-ham: Amateur radio operators ("hams") have known about electromagnetic energy's (radio, microwave, etc.) effect on the brain and other soft tissues for many years. In fact, the F.C.C., a long time ago, recommended that ham operators, especially when using high power transmitters, try to minimize that energy within their "radio shacks" and minimize their exposure time to it. It was observed, too, many years ago, that automobile drivers passing the very powerful Voice of America short-wave transmitting site in Bethany, Ohio (north of Cincinnati) experienced measurably increased reaction times to driving events while driving near the station.
And, some countries have studied the effects of cell-phone electomagnetic radiation on the brain, especially when next to the ear, and recommend that the phone be kept away from the body and used in tge speaker-phone mode.
To think that all that electromagnetic energy flowing into the "ether" we live in has no effect on us and other living creatures, in the short and long terms, is living in a fantasy. That type of energy has not been in existence, as such, long enough for us to really observe its effect on us.
214
You seem to be mixing up different concepts involving electromagnetic radiation. I would recommend looking up the difference between frequency and intensity, and learning about the different properties that different frequencies of EM radiation has.
You'll realize that radio waves do not have enough enegry, regardless of intensity, to do harm to the human body (unlike microwaves).
4
@Dr. Mandrill Balanitis
I agree with all you say here except in your last paragraph.
This type of energy is, in fact, common in nature. The sun, like every other star, is a natural source of microwaves.
Instead of seeming to imply that this form of electromagnetic energy is solely manmade, you should have made clear that it has been ubiquitous throughout humanity’s existence. The distinction you failed to make is one of continuity and intensity.
1
@Dr. Mandrill Balanitis
Yes.
There are people who register the disturbance of subtle energy flow processes in the body and accordingly cannot bring themselves to use cell phones. They are so few though that we can allow ourselves to overhear and ridicule them. We keep escalating artificial radiation with abandon. Now we want to augment (let me do a wild guess: quadruple?) the thing with self-driving cars. Wise?
How many R&D funds are allotted to efforts to monitor possible damage from cell phone and similar radiation? Are long-term studies being set up?
Without that we're stuck with anecdotal evidence like that incidental psychiatrist I met who ended up with a brain tumor from listening to his clients all day, which is a comparable form of overexposure.
A propos overexposure: what worries me even more is the Frey effect of Fox's Relentlessly Escalated Yelling, paid for by those who already managed to rule by engineering division, and now step up the effort in horror of the inevitable Wall their ship full of kleptocratic greed addiction rewards is heading for, straight ahead into it.
I'm still trusting though that the Wall of (our sovereign heart's) Reason will not fall to the deflection of their trumped-up radiation Wall of Treason to Humanity.
To think that having my house bathed in microwaves would mean I could leave my supper on the window sill and come home to find it cooked? I see a new cookbook coming out of all of this. Windowsill popcorn too.
12
@John Doe: Microwave ovens operate at 2450 MHz, the resonant frequency of water. No other devices use that frequency because water is pervasive in the environment and it would interfere with anything else. That simple fact made the microwave oven industry possible.
If the Cubans used microwaves, they probably used a different frequency because of the possibility that the diplomatic personnel would notice their water heating up for no reason, and so discover what was being done.
Then there's the inverse square of the distance. The intensity of electromagnetic force (EMF) falls off quickly as you move away from the source. Enough EMF to heat water in your house would cook birds in flight at the cell tower.
59
@mlbex. This is a widespread myth. See this:
"... resonant interactions are not a major factor in the heating of liquids and solids in a microwave oven. … The major mechanism for heating water in a microwave oven is described as dielectric heating."
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Waves/mwoven.html
3
@mlbex Water per se does not have a resonance frequency.
Microwave ovens operate at 2.45gHz because that is the portion of the spectrum allocated by the FCC for un-licensed radiators.
That piece of spectrum is also used by WiFi, which is why your computer stops communicating when you use a poorly designed microwave oven.
3
It's not just US personnel that were targeted. Canadian embassy staff in Cuba, and members of their families, were also affected (e.g. https://www.macleans.ca/news/how-canadian-diplomats-in-cuba-are-being-ac...
194
@Karl Gauss It is quite remarkable that Canada parted ways with America in terms of setting its relationship with Cuba during the Cold War; Pierre Trudeau got along with Castro very well, and Canada's vast distance from Cuba in contrast to that of the US explains why Ottawa chose not to sever all links with Cuba after Castro allied his island with the USSR.
1
@Karl Gauss. Also China, Hong Kong?
Another mystery.......Microwaves are easily detected. Why weren’t sensors deployed as part of an investigation ?
260
@Bongo
I suspect that if sensors were deployed, any information gathered would not be disclosed, and the presence of sensors would itself have been classified.
The attacks were intermittent--and at least one discussed was in a non-embassy site (the home of the victim). Portable sensors would have been required and also required to be with the possible targets at all times.
Further, it is highly likely that security authorities knew or suspected a microwave attack from the moment it was reported. Sensors could have been made available within days of the first reports of the disturbance.
@Bongo According to the article, the attacks ceased before an adequate defense/detection could be set up: " giving the agents relatively little time to gather clues".
2
The video accompanying this article should be required viewing for all defenders of democracy.
It seems the U.S. military currently has the technology to effectively disable organized protest. What could possibly go wrong?
395
@BobMeinetz
"It seems the U.S. military currently has the technology to effectively disable organized protest."
"Our" police and surveillance state wants to deploy this technology to the local police so you will feel safe.
17
@BobMeinetz: The military and police have always had the ability to disable organized protest. Only the rule of law prevents them from doing so.
66
@Fourteen . This seems to be an easily transferrable technological gimmick, but obscenely destructive in the wrong hands. When did that ever work out to everyone's satisfaction?
7