
Microwave Weapons Are Suspect in Ills of U.S. Embassy Workers - skip_region
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-cuba-microwave.html
======
neuroma
Okay I'm skeptical. On the one side some 'bad other' could be using an
undefined device to attack only American people, only in foreign lands, and
for uncertain reasons. That narrative conveniently fuels paranoia and makes
for good reading. Alternative explanations exist, based on well established
medicine, which I think need air time, link below.

Now, I'm all for exciting stories but this one keeps being resurrected without
evidence I'd find compelling (namely lesions on MRI, quantifiable deficits in
function, or signs and symptoms that prove neural damage). Indeed all the
features of this particular syndrome appear better explained by functional,
rather than structural, disease.

Of course the possiblility of acoustic or electromagnetic weapons being used
exists until proven otherwise, but in light of what is known, it seems
unlikely to me.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/14/cuban-
acoustic...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/14/cuban-acoustic-
attack-report-on-us-diplomats-flawed-say-neurologists)

Declaration of interests: I've worked with Prof. Stone.

~~~
mrb
Your link is the first time I hear of mass psychogenic illness. Quite an
interesting phenomenon. I particularly liked the case below from 1972. It
seems MPI could very well explain these incidents.

« _In a mid-western university town of over 50,000 population, a strange case
of "gas poisoning" occurred on a Wednesday morning early in March, 1972.
Approximately thirty-five female workers at the University's data processing
center were exposed to a mysterious gas "from an unknown source" that caused
dizziness, vomiting, nausea, and fainting among a number of the employees. So
severe were the symptoms that 10 of the workers were taken to the University's
Medical Center for emergency treatment; all of the employees at the Data
Center were evacuated._

 _The Center was temporarily closed allowing for a group of environmental
specialists to examine the building. During the remainder of that day and into
the night, samples of the air obtained from the building were tested.
Extensive blood and urine tests of affected workers were conducted in order to
locate traces of the noxious "gas." Although traces of the substance could not
'be found, several workers again became ill upon returning to work Thursday
morning. The Data Center was closed and evacuated for the second time.
Additional environmental ;and physiological tests were conducted; still no
physical reason for the episode could be located._

 _When the Center resumed operation on Friday a group of specialists from the
University met with the workers to explain that they thought an "atmospheric
inversion" was the cause of their symptoms. This explanation was calculated to
reduce the high level of anxiety that had surrounded the activities of the two
previous days; the explanation seemed to meet its objective. The incident was
"closed" as far as both the workers and the scientists were concerned despite
the fact that traditional biomedical explanations had failed to explain the
events._»

See more at [https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/2136925](https://sci-
hub.tw/10.2307/2136925)

~~~
d0100
Mass psych illness is brought up everytime this is discussed

~~~
no_identd
Indeed:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/12/cuba-mass-
hyst...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/12/cuba-mass-hysteria-
sonic-attacks-neurologists)

But that doesn't make it neccesarily true, see my other comment here, in
context with the comment I responded to there:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17894909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17894909)

------
lostlogin
“In dictatorships, you often have factions that think nothing of going against
the general policy if it suits their needs. I think that’s a perfectly viable
explanation.” Frey.

I’m not sure that’s a thing unique to dictatorships at all.

------
russfink
Is there a defense against this kind of thing? Not to sound cliche, but would
a tin foil hat work?

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
A simple experiment result published by the MIT Media Lab, found tinfoil hats
are not really effective.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csa...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100708230258/http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/)

> _For all helmets, we noticed a 30 db __amplification__ at 2.6 Ghz and a 20
> db amplification at 1.2 Ghz, regardless of the position of the antenna on
> the cranium. In addition, all helmets exhibited a marked 20 db attenuation
> at around 1.5 Ghz, with no significant attenuation beyond 10 db anywhere
> else._

Full electromagnetic shielding of the entire building perhaps? Like those at
the NSA headquarter. It should give you a heavy attenuation on the microwave
frequency.

BTW, why don't the intelligence agencies install a software-defined radio in
suspected US embassies to log the entire microwave spectrum? It will
definitely yield something.

~~~
kurthr
You don't even need SDR... a really simple LED and a few variable antennas
would do a good job into the GHz.

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
For detection, yes, it can be done by an extremely simple circuit. But you
would need the raw I/Q sample data over a broad frequency range to perform a
technical analysis to identify the nature of the microwave. Here's when a SDR
comes handy.

~~~
kurthr
The LED just reveals power (detection of radiation over many visible orders of
magnitude) ... it doesn't need to detect coherent I/Q, because I don't think
neural effects are sensitive to phase either. Selectively cooking a brain
would require relatively high power and beam forming, but not high data rate.
Audio frequencies are visible (use multiple band pass filters if you like) .

You'd also want a controlled test source so you'd know if the attacker had
burned it out.

------
tim333
There's also a Science Daily report with some other info including

>"We have seen this before when the Soviets irradiated the U.S. Embassy in
Moscow in the days of the Cold War," he said.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180829115456.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180829115456.htm)

------
prmph
Why is this effect not used to develop a device that converts normal sounds
into such microwaves that the deaf can hear?

~~~
krapp
I would imagine the negative health effects caused by long-term exposure of
the brain to microwaves strong enough to produce the desired effect might be a
factor.

------
baybal2
There is a point to bring: during the WWII and later cold war, Soviets were
_extremely_ vocal about untouchability of top political leadership, and
immunities provided by Vienna convention being absolute. And they uphold that
dearly.

Now my Western friends, try spending some time to think why they did so.

~~~
themodelplumber
Are you referring to their desire for immunity in ordering crimes against
humanity?

~~~
baybal2
Yes, so they thought.

It was their desire to make the West to believe that is a "West vs East"
conflict, not "the West vs them personally."

All Soviet leaders were quite paranoid when it came to assassination fears,
and the West going after right/left hand person.

~~~
madeuptempacct
"The 9th division of the KGB (responsible for the safety of all the members of
Politburo, including the leader of the USSR) had 3000 personnel."

"After the fall of the USSR, the president (Boris Yeltsin) had a private guard
of 18,000 personnel. Far more government leaders were guarded than they were
during the USSR."

Quotes above from "From the KGB to the FSB" by Eugene Michalevich

If you are interested, there is a biography by Victor Medvedev
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Medvedev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Medvedev))
about his time guarding various leaders of the USSR. If the book is to be
believed, security was very light.

~~~
baybal2
>If the book is to be believed, security was very light.

Light compared to what? Numerically, yes. It was making no sense to have more
than a regiment of them in a country where the total number of 3 letter
agencies staff was comparable to standing army. But the level of paranoia was
not light whatsoever.

Yeltsin on the other hand had to live under a constant threat of armed
uprising by the same three letter agencies. The internal threat had an
entirely different nature.

~~~
madeuptempacct
Light compared to virtually any "important" person today.

"Yeltsin on the other hand had to live under a constant threat of armed
uprising by the same three letter agencies. The internal threat had an
entirely different nature."

Shouldn't have disbanded Vympel because they refused to storm the white house
and risk a ton of casualties. Yeltsin was a drunk, useless coward.

Oh, and he also re-organized the KGB/MVD/FSB 3+ times.

------
snorrah
So in this thread we have mrtksn calling this lousy journalism, and
madeuptemcappt saying it’s a well-researched and cited article.

So which is it?

~~~
scottlocklin
It's a series of fairly unlikely assertions backed with plausible looking
narrative and interviews. Pretty typical for the NYT these days, and very sad.

IEEE Spectrum did a series of articles on this; I thought the mostly likely
explanation was ultrasound jammers and intermodulation distortion. Aka
defective gear; which is why the same thing seems to have happened in China as
well as Cuba.

~~~
tim333
There's a link to one of the IEEE articles here
[https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/how-we-
reve...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/how-we-reverse-
engineered-the-cuban-sonic-weapon-attack)

with a recording of sounds recorded at the embassy and their attempts to
reproduce it. To me the microwave theory seems a better fit.

~~~
scottlocklin
This is the one I had in mind:

[https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/finally-
a-l...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/finally-a-likely-
explanation-for-the-sonic-weapon-used-at-the-us-embassy-in-cuba)

------
tw1010
My spookometer isn't going off because of what happened with the diplomats,
but why the story is covered so darn much in the news.

~~~
jonny_eh
Because it's super interesting? I never heard of this Frey Effect before, nor
about the military's "active denial system".

~~~
JetSpiegel
The Frey guy even supports the theory that the Russians are coming here,
infecting our bodily fluids.

The active denial system was sold as a better water cannon to disperse
protests, since it burns the skin over T-Shirts.

------
flycaliguy
My theory remains that a couple Americans were paid to fake symptoms which
others then grew convinced they also suffered.

------
greesil
Looks like the tinfoil hat crowd has been right all along.

~~~
a3n
After Snowden, I'm much less dismissive of thin foil hats.

~~~
jMyles
> thin foil hats

Haha, I've never heard this phrase, but I have the same sense about the
distinction to be made.

~~~
a3n
It was a fortuitous typo.

------
madengr
RF/Microwave EE here. I actually tried this on myself several years ago with
no effect. Specifically 20W at C-band into a 10 dBi standard gain horn a few
feet away, pulse mod to 1 kHz. That was still not near enough power density.

While it’s plausible, it would take a big effort to affect this many people.
The peak power densities, as described in the paper, would be tens of W/cm^2;
e.g. radar transmitters and big antennas.

To direct this power, you’d have to track someone with a high gain antenna,
and once you are non line of sight, it would attenuate greatly. That, or you’d
have to place covert equipment in close proximity, in many locations.

It would also be very easy to detect with basic test equipment, as the desired
peak power levels are huge.

Maybe there could be some organ resonance effect with mmWaves, such as bones
in the ear, but that is sketchy too.

Here is the link from the article:

[https://braincontrolhedge.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/audito...](https://braincontrolhedge.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/auditory-
system-response-to-radio-frequency-energy-technical-note.pdf)

~~~
no_identd
I'll quote Allan H. Frey, who more-or-less(preceeded by some italian
engineers, iirc) invented the entire field, from 1996 on usenet:

>There is a microwave hearing effect that occurs at very low power densities
and a skull vibration effect that occurs when very high energies are applied
to the head. There is some confusion in the literature because the vibration
effect has often been referred to as a microwave hearing effect, but it is not
the same phenomena.

And, quoting from a different page:

>In fact, Frey and Hackett said the microwave hearing effect does not occur
with millimeter waves (which range from 3 to 300 GHz).

>

>"On the other hand, if your millimeter waves have enough energy density, are
powerful enough, there are other phenomena where you could cause sort of a
concussion kind of effect which could conceivably be heard by bone conduction.
It would transfer through skin to bone and bone into the inner ear," Frey
said. He said it might be possible to modulate such energy to create the
perception of some intelligible sounds. "But off hand, I can't tell you what
kind of power levels you might need to do that," he said. Hackett dismissed
the idea of transmitting intelligible sounds to the head with MMWs as pure
speculation.

Note how the mythbusters episode where they 'busted' that myth seems like an
(unintentional) sham:

They used a 9.4 GHz radar dish (courtesy of the DoD) with ultra short impulses
spread out over long periods. That fits NEITHER of the above.

Someone, on, OF FUCKING COURSE, /r/conspiracy, quite a while ago, pointed out
something related:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/77v6t1/reddit_d...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/77v6t1/reddit_detectives_recent_news_about_the_cuba/)

Which points out that the boxspring mattresses used in many Hotels might
strongly amplify the ability to induce tissue damage, which would explain this
part:

"The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a
Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back
into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he’d
walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room."

From
[https://www.apnews.com/697536f065e6470eaa5ccfc35061e7ce](https://www.apnews.com/697536f065e6470eaa5ccfc35061e7ce)

Of course, back then, almost everyone dismissed this. Or did they? (Insert
dramatic music here)

Here, some more quotes from Allan H. Frey, via [http://www.the-
scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32648/...](http://www.the-
scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32648/title/Opinion--Cell-Phone-Health-
Risk-/):

>For example, after my colleagues and I published in 1975 that exposure to
very weak microwave radiation opens the regulatory interface known as the
blood brain barrier (bbb), a critical protection for the brain, the Brooks AFB
group selected a contractor to supposedly replicate our experiment. For 2
years, this contractor presented data at scientific conferences stating that
microwave radiation had no effect on the bbb. After much pressure from the
scientific community, he finally revealed that he had not, in fact, replicated
our work. We had injected dye into the femoral vein of lab rats after exposure
to microwaves and observed the dye in the brain within 5 minutes. The Brooks
contractor had stuck a needle into the animals’ bellies and sprayed the dye
onto their intestines. Thus it is no surprise that when he looked at the brain
5 minutes later, he did not see any dye; the dye had yet to make it into the
circulatory system.

Some more points:

[https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j....](https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1975.tb36019.x)
From 1975 presumably what Frey refers to in the above paragraph, entitled
"NEURAL FUNCTION AND BEHAVIOR: DEFINING THE RELATIONSHIP"

[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368378209040347](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368378209040347)
here, a review from 1982, very much related to the previous quote, entitled
"Microwaves and the Blood-Brain Barrier: A Review"

[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/15368378309040355](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/15368378309040355)
and here is a letter correcting that review, sort of. Unfortunately, this
letter never got cited in the scientific literature, while the above review
did.

For more bibliographical information, one might also wish to examine this
email by Allen L. Barker from 2002:

[https://archive.fo/V3r0Y](https://archive.fo/V3r0Y) (THEORETICALLY also
available here, but the domain behind this,
[http://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/](http://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/), is unreachable
from large parts of the internet from what I can tell:
[http://www.bio.net/mm/neur-
sci/2002-May/048366.html](http://www.bio.net/mm/neur-
sci/2002-May/048366.html))

Of course, EVERYTHING surrounding this (but NOT the subject matter ITSELF)
involves a hell of a lot of: * conspiracy theory * fringe science (aka
protoscience) * pseudoscience

levels of insanity, as you can likely tell from some of the above. This makes
it extremely hard to filter through any of this. The EU did a large report on
RF safety a while ago:

[https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/scientific_co...](https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/scientific_committees/emerging/docs/scenihr_o_041.pdf)

If you check it, Frey's papers on this remain oddly absent from it.

Oh and... We could likely find a lot more existing discussion on this, but
unfortunately, the emf-bio archives got expunged from
ftp://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/usenet/bionet/emf-bio without explanation. If
anyone at the University of Indiana wants to go digging into backup tapes, I'd
appreciate it.

~~~
jazzyjackson
I have this notion that surrounding a subject with basket case conspiracy
theories would be a good way to get people not to take it seriously :) Of
course, there's many feedback loops that allow believers to have their beliefs
bolstered by negations.

~~~
no_identd
>I have this notion that surrounding a subject with basket case conspiracy
theories would be a good way to get people not to take it seriously :)

Indeed, it would. A lot of clever people have discussed the issue of disinfo &
FUD, you might wish to:

* Watch this talk from FOSDEM '14 by Poul-Henning Kamp [Contextually, one important tidbit to keep in mind while watching it: At the time phk gave the talk, the heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL wasn't yet known!]:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcl17Q0bpk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwcl17Q0bpk)

* and, perhaps, read these two blog posts, but tread carefully with those two, as, unlike the above video, the below edges MOST dangerously close to basket case conspiracy theory territory - arguably, it doesn't get there, but I can definitely say that if one slips while looking into the below, one'll immediately end up in basket case territory:

[https://squamuglia.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/67/](https://squamuglia.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/67/)

[https://squamuglia.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/yes-kids-
cookie-...](https://squamuglia.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/yes-kids-cookie-
monster-is-a-psyop/)

However, having said this & pointed out all of the above, before going down
any of the above lanes, keep something else in mind:

1\. Take a look at when some of these links got first published __online __.
Multi-decade gap vs. original date of publication. Something unfortunately
still the norm for a lot of old(er) scientific /academic literature.

2\. Most of Frey's original papers from the 60s are still behind a __HARD
__paywall. Again, unfortunately still the norm for a lot of old(er) scientific
/academic literature.

3\. The whole classified Radar tech research aspect of it (This whole avenue
of research got started out when radar techs in the 60s started complaining
about headaches when working in front of big damn radar dishes!)

------
madeuptempacct
I just want to point out that this is an exceptionally well-researched and
cited article, didn't expect that (which is funny - I just realized I set a
lower standard for mainstream media than the tech blog posts I read that
people write in their free time).

~~~
prolikewh0a
Where is the evidence that it's actually happening?

~~~
cycrutchfield
It’s a newspaper not a scientific journal. What makes you think they would
have access to any evidence? They are merely summarizing the research that
others have done.

------
vat
This may sound crazy but I think I have the solution: we make hats out of tin
foil to block the microwaves.

Nice try

------
MrTonyD
I keep reading about quantum entanglement - and how it has been used in
practice to transmit secure messages. Seems like it is a technology that might
somehow be used to induce frequencies without leaving any evidence. A lot of
that works is secret, so it's hard to tell what is really being done.

~~~
driverdan
Quantum physics only works at the quantum level. It's impossible for it to do
anything like this.

