Mystery of Sonic Weapon Attacks At US Embassy In Cuba Deepens (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: 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. Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 U.S. victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top U.S. diplomat has called them "health attacks." New details learned by the Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling U.S. officials who say the facts and the physics don't add up.

Suspicion initially focused on a sonic weapon, and on the Cubans. Yet the diagnosis of mild brain injury, considered unlikely to result from sound, has confounded the FBI, the state department and U.S. intelligence agencies involved in the investigation. Some victims now have problems concentrating or recalling specific words, several officials said, the latest signs of more serious damage than the U.S. government initially realized. The United States first acknowledged the attacks in August -- nine months after symptoms were first reported.

Comments

Not Cuba

[Dan East]

I commented on this story in the past, and I'll say it again now. It doesn't make any sense that the Cuban government is doing this. They are a dictatorship, and if they didn't want US diplomats there, or didn't want to try and reconnect with the US, then they simply wouldn't do it. For them to try and injure US diplomats makes no sense at all. I believe this is being done by some 3rd party nation to try and cause problems between the US and Cuba. Why? Because they want to maintain the status quo (the US and Cuba not having diplomatic relations) because they stand to gain either financially and / or in regional influence and power. Several South American countries, as well as Russia, come to mind...

From an excerpt from a 2016 article discussing the US restoring some relations with the Cuban Government:

As if that wasn’t remarkable enough, this has occurred with Cuban-Russian relations at their strongest since the demise of the Soviet Union. Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev has visited Cuba twice since February 2008 while Vladimir Putin visited in July 2014. Meanwhile Raúl Castro has been to Moscow three times in recent years. Can these two relationships really keep improving in parallel?

http://theconversation.com/cub...

Re:Not Cuba

[ShanghaiBill]

It doesn't make any sense that the Cuban government is doing this.

Yes it does. People have this weird blindspot where they readily accept that their own society has factions, but are far more willing to believe that their adversaries are monolithic. Obama opened up relations with Cuba, and there is opposition to that by hardliners in America. But there is also OPPOSITION IN CUBA, because they have their own hardliners, who see Raul's opening to the imperialists as a betrayal of the ideals of the revolution. Some of those rejectionist hardliners are in powerful positions, and it is likely that they are doing this to sabotage relations between America and Cuba, and possibly even get rid of Raul and the Castro dynasty.

Re:Not Cuba

[quantaman]

It doesn't make any sense that the Cuban government is doing this.

Yes it does. People have this weird blindspot where they readily accept that their own society has factions, but are far more willing to believe that their adversaries are monolithic. Obama opened up relations with Cuba, and there is opposition to that by hardliners in America. But there is also OPPOSITION IN CUBA, because they have their own hardliners, who see Raul's opening to the imperialists as a betrayal of the ideals of the revolution. Some of those rejectionist hardliners are in powerful positions, and it is likely that they are doing this to sabotage relations between America and Cuba, and possibly even get rid of Raul and the Castro dynasty.

Alternately this was a surveillance operation gone awry, they were trying to spy on the diplomats using some kind of ultrasonic imaging device and screwed up. Either the tech was way more dangerous than they thought or the operators miscalibrated it.

Re:Not Cuba

[Kjella]

However there are a few parties around that are absolutely livid over the idea of relations between U.S. and Cuba being normalized. My money is on it turning out to be U.S.-based Cuban group whose families hated Castro for one reason or another possibly in partnership with counter-revolutionaries still in Cuba. Less likely is someone in Cuba who thinks Raul Castro is betraying the Revolution by engaging with the U.S. But it is possible.

Those people exist. But who of them would think we hate that, let's create a secret sonic screwdriver to give US diplomats hearing loss and light brain damage. I mean whatever is creating this must have gone through a pretty big R&D project with a non-trivial chance of failure. It must have been tweaked and tested pretty well to both be strong enough to cause damage and weak enough to remain stealthy for quite some time. That sounds to me like a secret intelligence/military program, not some ragtag rebels. Even if they stole a prototype, somebody would know and using it correctly would not be easy - look at the rebels in Eastern Ukraine who couldn't tell the difference between military jets and a civilian airliner.

The second thing that doesn't add up is motivation, if you're trying to sabotage US-Cuba relations you'd better not look like a third party trying to do just that. You'd try to discredit or frame Cuba, you might stage some blatant attack like a car bomb or poison their food to say the US is not wanted but this FUD? Let's be honest, diplomats are an archaic leftover from when they were trusted emissaries and negotiators because getting instructions from home took days and weeks. Even if they pulled out physically, the US could maintain normal diplomatic relations virtually. You'd only need a booth to handle physical matters, though you could probably move most things like visa applications online too. The actual embassy is today mostly for show.

My guess is that this is an intelligence project gone wrong. This is supposed to be a form of scanner, picking up on something trying to punch through some countermeasures that are in place and causing long term damage that wasn't caught in testing. To me that's by far the most plausible explanation for why this would exist and why they'd target diplomats in particular. I mean there are probably other ways you could damage economic ties, tourism or whatever that could damage relations but only diplomats would have political information of any real value. Everything else seems a bit contrived, like you could but it wouldn't really make any sense.

Re: Not Cuba

[drinkypoo]

if you bothered to read the details they don't believe it is a targeted sonic weapon as the physics combined with the brain damage mean it is likely something else.

There's really only two possibilities. One, directed sound. Two, directed RF. As it turns out, you can stimulate human hearing with certain radio frequencies.

Either way, having the effect be strong at some points and weak at others is a classic sign of an interference pattern. Two identical, synchronized point emission sources of sound (or RF) will create both valleys of zero signal strength, and peaks of double strength.

Either way, the effect should be measurable.

CBC also has a story

[Target Drone]

CBC recently had a story on the 5 Canadian diplomats and families affected. They also speculated that since Canada has better relations with Cuba it's unlikely the Cuban government is behind this. The story also mentions that since Russia has a large diplomatic presence in Cuba, has been known to harass foreign diplomats and also has the know how to possibly develop this kind of high tech weapon that they are a possible suspect.

Re:I actually agree

[LostMyBeaver]

Do you often hear one person talking, then a room full of people laughing and then you realize you're not?

This is commonly referred to as "Missing the joke". It is common among people who are told one thing and hear something else.

Of course, I don't have a good vocabulary entry regarding when it's about politics rather than jokes, but I believe you have just experienced it. There are actually therapists (not to be confused with "the rapists") who specialize in trying to help you with this disorder.

Trump is and always has been about monuments. I've seen many of his monuments. As a real-estate developer, he was generally willing to build things just about everywhere and anywhere so long as it would have his name on it. His gift has generally always been to gather business people and investors together to pool their money for a development project. He would then make provisions that said that he really didn't care whether he made money or not himself... it was only important his name was on it. He likes big shiny things with his name on it.

Watch every single thing he has done in D.C. so far... every deal, every negotiation. Consistently, it's been about gaining leverage for the "Trump Wall" or "Great Wall of Trump". No other topic causes him to become so impassioned as building a wall. He is backing off of dreamers now because he realized "I have to admit that there are some Mexicans that actually should be sent back"... he really doesn't care one way or the other. Hell, if he did, Trump would never have employed dreamers himself. What he does care about is that he will get one of the biggest monuments in the world with his name on it.

So... stop thinking about Trump in terms of politics. He will (as he has so far) do absolutely anything to gain support for his new monument. Congress could get tons of stuff out of him if all they did was use 1 mile of wall as a form of payment for him ... like "Trump make this happen and we'll give you a mile of wall". He would pant and drool. He doesn't want love. He doesn't need money. He wants buildings and walls and golf courses with his name on it. He assumes that this would be his 5000 year competition for the Great Wall of China or the Pyramids. He knows that if the wall goes up, it will stay up and maintained in some form or another for at least several hundred years... dedicated to Trump.. If Hoover can get the damn, Trump can have the wall.

Then there's Cuba.

Cuba is an excellent opportunity for :
  a) Land grabs. Greece, Southern Italy, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, Mallorca, Malta, Gozo, etc... are covered with hotels... almost all sea front real-estate is owned by opportunist land grabbers from elsewhere. This is probably Greece's #1 financial problem. Their most valuable industry... tourism is completely owned by external entities.
  b) Tax haven.... Trump has always loved a great tax haven... I'd bash him.. but he would be stupid if he didn't.
  c) Monuments.... the cost of building in Cuba is low enough now that Trump could build and furnish the world's largest casino for pennies on the dollar. It's not about profit. It's about making a hotel with a sign so big you'd be able to read "Trump" from the Florida Keys.

Trump is done padding his bottom line. Even if he loses everything now, he will still get the presidential retirement package which is pretty good from what I hear. He doesn't have to make more money. He simply needs to relocate it to maximize the visibility of Trump for as long as possible.

He wants the monuments. Casinos come and go... but with some luck, we can keep his name on one ... in neon for 200 years.

Re: Microwave weapons

[Anonymous Coward]

A microwave weapon seems to be the most likely hypothesis because of its ability to explain all of the symptoms observed. I haven't seen evidence that sonic weapons could explain the full range of symptoms. Microwaves can and do pass through walls, so I'm wondering about why people staying in other rooms in the direction of the microwaves wouldn't also report symptoms as well. You'd need to be fairly close in order to direct a beam that narrowly and precisely. Higher frequencies would require smaller parabolic antennas to direct the beam, plus they would attenuate more rapidly, perhaps limiting the exposure to others in the building. Accidental exposure to radar wouldn't explain this because a radar spends most of its time listening rather than transmitting. My guess is that someone is transmitting microwaves from nearby in the building.

I find it unlikely that someone who isn't state-sponsored could carry out this volume of attacks with this degree of precision. I concur with the others in the comments who suspect Russia of being responsible. Cuba stands to benefit from normalized relations with the US and it makes no sense for them to attack American and Canadian diplomats. Russia would be the prime suspect, but this type of attack is very difficult to link to them. Simply turn off the transmitter and remove some relatively small equipent to eliminate any trace of the attack.

Re:North Korea?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they tested this same technology on that young American prisoner who died of severe brain damage...