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First Cuba, Now China? A Worker In US Embassy In China Experienced 'Abnormal' Sounds, Brain Damage (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the mystery-deepens dept.

amxcoder writes: An American citizen working at a U.S. consulate located in the Chinese city of Guangzhou has reported experiencing "abnormal" sounds (and pressures) for the past several months, starting in late 2017 until April of 2018. Upon medical evaluation, the worker has been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury symptoms. The U.S. embassy is conducting an investigation into the issue, and is issuing warnings to all U.S. citizens in China. The symptoms and several other similarities has drawn comparison to a similar event last year in a different U.S. embassy in Cuba. Officials can not link the two events together at this point, but the U.S. State Department is working with Chinese authorities to investigate the issue further. As a result of the Cuba acoustic "attacks," the U.S. government in October expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the U.S. for what it said was Cuba's failure to protect staff at the U.S. embassy in Havana. Staff there reported symptoms including hearing loss, dizziness, fatigue, and cognitive issues. Canadian personnel also reported similar health symptoms.

3 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Still need to take this with skepticism by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The embassy in Cuba was renovated in the '70's and has ultrasonic alarms of that vintage. The sound of more than one of them intermodulating with each other (a harmless effect) would be exactly as reported.

    The problem with these reports is that the U.S. has been intensively monitoring for various forms of sound, radio waves, radiation, etc. since the Great Seal Bug. And you've got to be skeptical about anything that all of the intelligence and military agencies of the great and powerful USA can't detect.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
    1. Re:Still need to take this with skepticism by rahvin112 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      These "attacks" are alleged to have occured at the workers homes.

      The biggest problem I have with this whole story is that all the experts on sound keep saying what the US proposes is happening here violates the laws of physics. That to generate an effect like this at any distance is practically impossible.

      I've been of the opinion that whatever is happening is likely a conflict between two systems exacerbated by some sore of harmonic. Probably a bug / counter bug that are interacting in some bad way, maybe because one of them is broken. I have a hard time believing this is anything other that some accidental harmonic. I won't be surprised in the least if we find out that some fancy new US anti bugging tech is getting into a harmonic sequence with the bug and causing these problems because the US design never accounted for an ultrasonic bug that was broken and using the wrong frequency.

  2. Common Factor: US Embassy by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It seems to me that the common factor is that they work at a US Embassy. Presumably, these are stocked with a variety of high tech equipment both to enable and prevent spying. Is it possible that there is some undesirable interaction of this equipment? The alternative, that someone is targetting US officials in disparate parts of the world with a bizarre ultrasonic non-lethal weapon seems somewhat less likely in the absence of any evidence for either scenario.