If you’ve been following the news lately you’re probably aware of the so-called “Havana syndrome.” It’s been going on for some years, but the previous President didn’t pay much attention to it and we’re just learning how disorganized the government response to it was during that administration. There was no central way for departments to share reports of the episodes and many of the targets were intelligence officers whose identities and location could not be revealed.
Last Friday, President Biden’s top aides were told that experts studying the mysterious illnesses affecting scores of diplomats and their family members were still struggling to find evidence to back up the leading theory, that microwave attacks are being launched by Russian agents. The victims of the phenomenon experience unexplained headaches, dizziness and memory loss.
The National Security Council has begun an urgent effort to address the issue and two separate task forces are now in operation. The high-ranking nature of the investigation is an indication of how quickly the attacks, which date back to 2016, have risen from a medical mystery to an urgent national security issue.
The leading theory remains that microwave beams are aimed at government buildings and residences, either as part of an espionage effort or as a deliberate attempt to hit American officials with a debilitating, invisible and hard-to-trace weapon.
One theory is that the attack began as an espionage effort that turned into a stealthy means of attack. Microwave technology has been used over the years by American adversaries to try to recreate documents by detecting the emissions of typewriters and then computer keyboards and cellphone communications.
So far, the frustrating part is that there is still no definitive conclusion as to the cause that would enable the President to call out the Russians, the way he has with cyberattacks.
Information released last Friday indicated that the National Security Council was leveraging a broad array of scientific and medical expertise from within the government and outside it to explore multiple hypotheses and generate new insights into the episodes.
One element of that effort is to develop portable sensors that could be widely distributed to detect attacks. But it is hard to ensure that the sensors would work without any certainty that microwaves are the cause of the unexplained illnesses. And — even if they are the cause, the sensors would have to be able to pick up signals across a large part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
This mysterious illness is disturbing, but I find it interesting that it surfaced during the Trump administration…. and when you think about it, lots of strange things and theories surfaced during those four years. The theory that the corona virus leaked from a lab in China, UFOs became a hot topic after many years on the back burner and now the Havana syndrome…. seems like that four year period produced major unsolved mysteries on a regular basis. A lot of those things have not and maybe can not be resolved. The government has always had secrets, but for four years it seems like they also had a lot of mysteries. Secrets can usually, eventually be learned, but mysteries may never be solved. Right now, the Havana syndrome appears to fall into the mystery category.
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