According to Wikipedia:
Havana syndrome is a set of medical signs and symptoms experienced by United States and Canadian embassy staff in Cuba. Beginning in August 2017, reports surfaced that American and Canadian diplomatic personnel in Cuba had suffered a variety of health problems, dating back to late 2016.
The US government accused Cuba of perpetrating unspecified attacks causing these symptoms. The US reduced staff at their embassy to a minimum, and U.S. President Trump declared in October 2017 that he believed Cuba was responsible for the attacks.
Subsequent studies of the affected diplomats in Cuba, published in the journal JAMA in 2018, found evidence that the diplomats experienced some form of brain injury, but did not determine the cause of the injuries. A co-author of the JAMA study considered microwave weapons to be "a main suspect" for the phenomenon. A 2018 study published in the journal Neural Computation identified pulsed radio frequency/microwave radiation (RF/MW) exposure via the Frey effect as source of injury, and noted that a microwave attack against the US embassy in Moscow has been historically documented. Other researchers have posited other possible causes for the injuries, including ultrasound via intermodulation distortion caused by malfunctioning or improperly placed Cuban surveillance equipment; cricket noises, and exposure to neurotoxic pesticides. Early speculation of an acoustic or sonic cause was later determined to be unfounded. Some had suggested that the symptoms represented episodes of mass hysteria, but the 2018 JAMA researchers considered a "wholly psychogenic or psychosomatic cause" to be very unlikely, given the physical evidence of brain trauma.
In 2018, US diplomats in China reported problems similar to those reported in Cuba, as well as undercover C.I.A. agents operating in other countries who were negotiating with those countries on ways to counter Russian covert operations around the world.
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Originally this was described as some type of sonic weapon. But microwave radiation sounds like it was and is the likely culprit.
Why is this subject important? Well because it is still ongoing and has taken on a global nature. [I suspect there are many actors - Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea - involved. Maybe I am a bit paranoid but being a little paranoid can be a good thing.]
Whoever was behind the attacks also began going after Americans on American soil.
These attacks have occurred in Cuba, Russia, China, Australia, the United States, England, Poland, Georgia, and Taiwan,
Around fifty years ago, I worked near a tracking radar. This radar emitted microwave energy. One instruction that I received was never stand in front of the radar. Apparently one of the technicians had and he died as a result of this mistake.
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How does microwave radiation affect the brain?
The notion of weaponizing microwaves dates back to the Cold War, when, in 1961, an American biologist named Allan Frey discovered that irradiating a human head with microwaves could produce the sensation of sound—even in deaf ears, even from thousands of feet away. Playing with the frequency and intensity of the microwave beam could produce a range of different sensations in a person. In 2018, Frey told the New York Times that the Soviets took immediate notice of his work and flew him to Moscow, where they squired him around secret military facilities and asked him to give lectures about the effects of microwaves on the brain.
Soviet, and later Russian, scientists found that exposing an animal’s brain to microwaves changed the frequency at which neurons fired. Neurons also became suddenly out of sync with one another. Some brain cells in mice were found to have withered. Nerves became damaged. The radiation also showed the potential to disturb the sacrosanct blood-brain barrier and, according to the DIA, resulted in “the alterations of brain function.” The most common symptoms reported in humans who had been exposed to microwaves for long periods of time sounded familiar: headache, fatigue, perspiration, dizziness, insomnia, depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, and lack of concentration.
Douglas Smith, a neurosurgeon who heads the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair and his colleagues research has offered new insights into the Havana Syndrome—if little encouraging news for those suffering from it. In 2019, Smith and his team published a follow-up study that used advanced neuroimaging and brain-connectivity studies to look at the brains of diplomats hit in Havana. This technique showed what less sophisticated imaging had missed. The patients’ brain connectivity was severely affected, especially in the cerebellum and brain networks that control auditory and visuospatial functions. Their volumes of white matter—the inner, deeper part of the brain—were significantly reduced. White matter is made up of axons, the delicate wiring of the central nervous system. According to Smith, it was the axons and their carefully arranged structure that were damaged in people suffering from the syndrome. “If the axons break, that’s it,” he told me. “They won’t reconnect. And you’re not going to grow new axons. You only have the ones you’re born with.” The brain can learn to make up for and work around some of the damage, Smith says, but that takes time and the compensatory mechanisms are often far from perfect.
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Who is responsible? Well in many of these attacks, it was the Russians.
A team was assembled at Langley to investigate the incidents overseas. Investigators came to believe that the injuries to victims’ brains were caused by a microwave weapon, which could be beamed at its target through walls and windows, and could even be effective from a couple miles away. The most compelling evidence, however, came from publicly available data. As has been widely reported, mobile phones track people’s movements, and location-data companies accumulate this information and sell it. Using this sort of data, CIA investigators were able to deduce the whereabouts of Russian agents, and place them in close physical proximity to the CIA officers at the time they had been attacked when they were in Poland, Georgia, Australia, and Taiwan. In each case, individuals believed to be FSB agents were within range of the CIA officers who had been hit in 2019. In two of the incidents, location data apparently showed FSB agents in the same hotel at the same time their targets experienced the onset of symptoms.
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How was this done?
Well a miniaturized tracking radar could be installed in a van. The shell of the van would probably be fiberglass, because a metal shell would not work. A van is fairly indiscreet and is highly portable.
But there are two parts to this attack. Somehow the target location must be known. Almost like they would need a hidden transponder on the target, otherwise many innocent bystanders would also be affected by the attack.
But then it dawned on me that in our modern world we are all carrying around with us transponders. These are our smart phones.
For example: Shortly after Thanksgiving 2019, according to three sources familiar with the incident, a White House staffer was hit while walking her dog in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. According to a government source familiar with the incident, the staffer passed a parked van. A man got out and walked past her. Her dog started seizing up. Then she felt it too: a high-pitched ringing in her ears, an intense headache, and a tingling on the side of her face. According to the source, this had happened to the staffer before. In August 2019, she had accompanied John Bolton, who was then the national security adviser, on a trip to London.
[By now, these attacks were no longer a novel occurrence, and CIA people had come to call it “getting hit".]
Since cell phones can be paired. I wonder if the man that exited the van, paired his cell phone with hers as he passed by her as she walked her dog.
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What is to be done against this type of threat?
If you are a target be wary of the cell phones you use. Older (non- GPS, non-smart phone) technology may actually be safer.
Might have to carry a microwave detector with audible alarm. But you must have one that covers the suspected microwave band. This would probably be the range of 300 MHz and 300 gigahertz.
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Sources:
Havana syndrome
Neuroimaging Findings in US Government Personnel With Possible Exposure to Directional Phenomena in Havana, Cuba
The Mystery of the Immaculate Concussion
Russia suspected of Cold War-style microwave attack on CIA agents in Australia
Microwave Attack Theory Demonstrates The Dangers of EMF
22 Oct 2020, 2:24 pm
