In In 2016, staff at both the U.S. and Canadian embassies in Cuba started reporting a host of unusual physical symptoms: severe headaches, nausea, muscle aches, nose bleeds, etc. Adults and children were both affected to varying degrees. Many of those who reported these symptoms said they heard high-pitched noises, clicks and other audio phenomena shortly before they felt the physical ailments in question. Many complained to their superiors, reports started getting out into the press, but little action was taken. Some within the military community — since the symptoms were also felt by members of the CIA and the Army — argued that the Russians must have some kind of microwave energy weapon that was causing these attacks. There was good reason for skepticism on the part of the U.S. government and other observers, however: namely, no existing weapon — even those in research labs — was believed to be capable of creating harmful sound waves that would affect individuals at close range.
There is a fairly long history of audio technology being used for things like crowd control etc. Police and other authorities in the U.S. have used what are called long-range acoustic devices or LRADs, large devices that emit a loud, painful sound over a long distance. These kinds of devices were used by police during demonstrations at the 2009 G20 Summit in Pittsburgh and during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. As of the year 2017, the LRAD Corporation, the company that originally created the device, was selling them to police forces and the military in more than 70 countries. For 30 years or more there have been devices that emit what’s called “infrasound,” which is sound waves that are too low for the human ear to hear, and they can cause pain and nausea — but the devices involved are large, and the sound waves are spread over a large area, so are useful only with groups.
After the initial reports in Cuba in 2016, the mystery continued, as more and more diplomatic staff in Cuba described feeling the same symptoms, with some lasting weeks or even months. One staffer had to get a hearing aid. Some members of the staff had to leave Cuba and return to their home country to seek medical attention, but the cause was still unknown. Cuban diplomats were expelled from the U.S. even though it wasn’t clear they were involved, or what even happened, and both Canada and the U.S. reduced the number of staff they had in Cuba to a minimum. Then came the medical and government reports investigating the cause of what had become known as “Havana Syndrome.” Both American and Canadian embassy workers were tested by their respective governments, and scientists said that brain scans of staff from both countries showed some neurological damage. Meanwhile, similar symptoms or “attacks” were reported at other U.S. embassy locations, including in Russia, Poland, and Taiwan.
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In 2018, a team of computer scientists at the University of Michigan reported in a study that ultrasound — and specifically what they called “intermodulation distortion” from multiple inaudible ultrasonic signals — could have caused some of the symptoms reported in Cuba, and they theorized that such signals could have come from malfunctioning or improperly placed Cuban surveillance equipment. Two studies by the FBI came next: the first was a non-public report by the FBI’s Operational Technology Division, and it said that there was “no evidence of a sonic attack or the involvement of foreign adversaries.” A separate investigation by the Bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit came to the conclusion that the individuals were experiencing a “mass psychogenic illness” a phenomenon in which people suffer symptoms but the cause is psychological.
Subsequent studies came to a variety of different conclusions: the government asked researchers at the University of Pennsylvania to examine some of the original victims, which led to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that said there were signs of unusual brain damage, and one of the authors said microwaves were one potential cause. However, the study came under fire from other scientists who said it suffered from fatal methodological flaws, and a physicist said that the idea of a microwave or directed-energy weapon causing such symptoms was wildly implausible. A report from physicists and other scientists that was declassified in 2021 concluded the noises reported were caused by insects and that it was highly unlikely microwaves or ultrasound were involved, because “No plausible single source of energy can produce both the recorded audio/video signals and the reported medical effects.”
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The U.S. has just such a weapon
For a number of years following these reports, up until relatively recently, mass psychogenic illness was the most popular theory for the symptoms reported in Cuba and elsewhere. I have made this argument myself in the past, in response to theories about Russian energy-beam weapons etc. There are many historical incidents of mass hysteria and in some cases they can cause what appear to be very real physical symptoms. In 1962, an outbreak of laughing attacks occurred in Tanzania, eventually affecting 14 schools and over 1,000 people. No biological cause was found. In 1965, more than 80 students at a girls’ school in England were rushed by ambulance to hospital with symptoms including hyperventilating, and even seizures. No biological cause was found. In 2011, multiple students at a high school began having symptoms similar to Tourette syndrome. An investigation concluded it was a case of mass psychogenic illness.
Fast forward to this week. In a 60 Minutes report, CBS News said that its journalists had uncovered evidence that the U.S. government has not only acquired a device capable of using sound waves to create the kinds of symptoms described by Havana Syndrome sufferers, but has been testing the device on rats and sheep, and has found it creates similar kinds of physical symptoms. According to the news network, multiple sources said that the U.S. government had acquired such a weapon — which is reportedly the size of a backpack — through a Russian crime network, and has been testing it for over a year. CBS also reported that in 2014, in response to a lawsuit, the National Security Agency confirmed there were reports of “a high-powered microwave system weapon” associated with a “hostile country.” But the CIA believed such a weapon would need enormous power and would be as big as a truck. From CBS News:
Investigative journalist Christo Grozev identified the men behind the August 2020 poisoning of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny [and] other men who attempted to poison Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, who later became a double agent for the UK. Grozev was the first to identify the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, Unit 29155, which consists of assassins and saboteurs who use countersurveillance, explosives, poison, and technologically advanced equipment. “This particular unit had been engaged with somewhere, somehow, empirical tests of a directed energy unit,” Grozev explained. He tracked down an email, what he considers a receipt, for services provided to the Russian government by a member of Unit 29155 for “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons.”
Dr. Relman said that during the previous investigations he was involved in into Havana Syndrome, the scientists doing the study found that the majority of research work done into the effects of microwaves on human beings was in the former Soviet Union. “And what they found was that effects could range from loss of consciousness to seizures to memory lapses, inability to concentrate, headaches, intense pressure, pain, disorientation, difficulty with balance, many of the things that we heard about from victims of Havana Syndrome,” he told CBS. Despite the fact that two expert panels concluded that the injuries in the Havana Syndrome incidents could have been caused by such a weapon, the idea was shelved by federal officials. “Do you believe your studies were downplayed by the U.S. government?” 60 Minutes asked Relman. “By parts of the U.S. government, absolutely,” Relman said. “And in some cases, buried.”
The government had plenty of help in ignoring any possibility of sound-wave weapons causing the Havana Syndrome symptoms: as recently as 2024, Scientific American reported that two new studies by the National Institutes of Health had found that the victims of those “attacks” showed no evidence of brain damage or any kind of established physical illness. The researchers compared more than 80 of these individuals with similar healthy people and the results showed no clinical signs or brain damage indicated. The studies were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and echoed a 2023 intelligence community assessment that found that the injuries were not the result of foreign attacks. More likely, it suggested, they were tied to previous injuries, stress, and “social factors” such as group psychology.
What does U.S. intelligence know?
Proof of a weapon like the one the U.S. is reportedly testing has come from sources other than CBS and 60 Minutes: the Washington Post reported last month that a government scientist in Norway secretly built a machine capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy and tested it on himself. He suffered neurological symptoms similar to those of “Havana syndrome.” Apparently the results surprised the Norwegian researcher, because he had earned a reputation as a leading opponent of the theory that directed-energy weapons can cause the type of symptoms associated with Havana Syndrome, and was doing the test in order to prove that such theories were wrong. The Norwegian government told the CIA about the results, two sources told the Post, which led to visits in 2024 to Norway by Pentagon and White House officials.
After the U.S. became aware of the test and the device acquired by military intelligence, two separate intelligence agencies altered their previous judgment and said that some of the incidents involving Havana Syndrome could be the work of a foreign adversary, a verdict included in a report in January of 2025. One of the agencies that changed its mind on the potential of such weapons was the National Security Agency, the Post reported, and the other was the National Ground Intelligence Center, which provides intelligence on the scientific capabilities of U.S. adversaries. However, the majority of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and four others, told the Post they continue to judge it “very unlikely” that the attacks were the result of a foreign adversary or that a foreign actor had developed a novel weapon capable of such attacks.
Writer Colin Nagy noted in his Why Is This Interesting newsletter that some of the skepticism about the potential for such weapons may be justified, because it appears that the weapon the U.S. government is testing uses sophisticated software to create a targeted beam of waves that overlap and rise and fall in intensity in just such a way as to create physiological havoc. But refusing to admit it might be possible was a political choice, he writes: “Acknowledging a covert directed-energy weapon that could silently target American diplomats in their homes would raise uncomfortable questions about deterrence, escalation, and how long the vulnerability had gone unaddressed.” Nagy also noted that in the 1950s the U.S. government buried reports of a microwave beam aimed at the U.S. embassy for decades before finally admitting that it existed.
Marc Polymeropolous, an active CIA agent for more than 25 years, wrote recently about how he was one of the victims of an attack similar to those described in the early Havana Syndrome reports, in 2017 while traveling to Moscow and believes that the CIA and other agencies have been covering it up. He wrote:
Military doctors at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington ultimately diagnosed and treated me for a line-of-duty traumatic brain injury. I was never the same after the incident and years of painful recovery continue to this day. The condition is officially designated by the U.S. government as “Anomalous Health Incidents.” The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under the Biden administration issued judgments that downplayed the possibility of foreign involvement, often attributing Havana Syndrome symptoms to “environmental factors” or pre-existing conditions without further explanation. At the CIA, senior leaders in the office of the Chief Operating Officer, the Office of Medical Services, and the Directorate of Analysis often privately denigrated victims — including me — by accusing us of fabricating our conditions for financial gain.
My skepticism of the entire Havana Syndrome storyline was based in part on pieces like this and this and this, which argued that the idea was absurd. A secret energy-beam weapon causing headaches seemed like the plot of a bad Hollywood movie, and the multiple studies arguing that it was mass psychogenic illness seemed credible — as did the reports from multiple physicists and scientists that no such weapon existed, and that even if it did, the idea that it could be carried by a human being and targeted at a small space was ridiculous. And now, here we are. There are two such weapons that do exactly that, and possibly thousands of victims whose lives have been irreparably changed for a decade, not just by the health impact but by experts not believing them. And at some point the CIA and other agencies knew about it (or should have) and have said nothing.
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