Hearing Loss of US Diplomats In Cuba Is Blamed On Covert Device (bostonglobe.com)

bsharma shares a report from The Boston Globe: The two-year-old U.S. diplomatic relationship with Cuba was roiled Wednesday by what U.S. officials say was a string of bizarre incidents that left a group of American diplomats in Havana with severe hearing loss attributed to a covert sonic device. In the fall of 2016, a series of U.S. diplomats began suffering unexplained losses of hearing, according to officials with knowledge of the investigation into the case. Several of the diplomats were recent arrivals at the embassy, which reopened in 2015 as part of former President Barack Obama's reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Some of the diplomats' symptoms were so severe that they were forced to cancel their tours early and return to the United States, officials said. After months of investigation, U.S. officials concluded that the diplomats had been exposed to an advanced device that operated outside the range of audible sound and had been deployed either inside or outside their residences. It was not immediately clear if the device was a weapon used in a deliberate attack, or had some other purpose.

Comments

Doubtful it was the Cubans

[Dan East]

I think it is very doubtful it was the Cuban government. They want money from the USA, in the form of tourism, the ability for people in the USA to send money back home to family in Cuba, etc. Obama already set all that in motion and gave it to them for free (IE without any worthwhile conditions or concessions from the Cuban government). The Castros should be tickled pink with the state of things - they still have full control, yet are now getting some respect and official acknowledgement from the superpower next door, and money, goods and services are beginning to flow into their country.

So it makes absolutely no sense for them to do something as petty as this - injuring diplomats from the USA for no good reason whatsoever, with the only possible result being harm to relations between the two countries. If the Cuban government didn't want these diplomats there, they would simply tell them to leave - it is a dictatorship after all.

IMO this is the action of some other government, with sophisticated technology and deep covert capability, doing this because it is in their best interest for Cuba and the USA to not have good relations. I'll leave the exercise of figuring out who those players could be to you.

Re:Same thing happened at the Canadian Embassy.

[Dan East]

In a comment earlier I threw out the idea that the hearing damage was caused by a countersurveillance device (such as one to disrupt laser microphones) that was employed incorrectly (used continuously when only meant for use for a few minutes at a time, wrong settings for the size of the room, etc). The fact that it happened to Canadians too might lend credence to that theory, as it is likely the US and Canada shares some degree of technology or services to protect diplomats in foreign countries. Still, this seems the kind of thing that the CIA would try and sweep under the rug if it was US tech that caused it, instead of playing dumb and letting it become mysterious international news.

There's also the possibility that the Cubans employed such a device to protect the privacy of foreign diplomats, as a nice gesture, and it the technology was misused in some way to cause hearing damage.