How We Reverse Engineered the Cuban “Sonic Weapon” Attack
This thread is going to be kept on a very short leash. It will be deleted at the first sign it going south.

 

That article does not (and couldn't possibly) demonstrate that the harm done to our embassy workers was intended or even a predictable result of whatever was being done by the Cubans.

Spying on a foreign embassy is pretty much expected, so catching the Cubans at it could hardly be called an act of war. Even if they were spying, you can't call it negligent harm if a reasonable person could not have expected that harm would be done.

Of course, it could have been intentional harm and therefore edging close to an act of war. I just don't see enough evidence yet.

 

I have not heard any reasonable answers. And we have another one.

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-diplomats-in-china-brain-injuries-sonic-attack-2018-6?r=UK&IR=T

 

How We Reverse Engineered the Cuban “Sonic Weapon” Attack
This thread is going to be kept on a very short leash. It will be deleted at the first sign it going south.

But to get to Cuba, we HAVE to go south!

 

How We Reverse Engineered the Cuban “Sonic Weapon” Attack
This thread is going to be kept on a very short leash. It will be deleted at the first sign it going south.

I have my serious doubt the attack (if it was one) was of the sonic weapon type.

 

How We Reverse Engineered the Cuban “Sonic Weapon” Attack
This thread is going to be kept on a very short leash. It will be deleted at the first sign it going south.

Seems that MW is now suspected. [edited to add: I should emphasize that it is *only suspected* and that the paper makes a very compelling case, at least to me.]

Preprint here (looks like NEJM but I don't know that for sure).

Mainstream news report here.


__________________________________________
Frey effect info here if you are interested.

 

Seems that MW is now suspected. [edited to add: I should emphasize that it is *only suspected* and that the paper makes a very compelling case, at least to me.]

Preprint here (looks like NEJM but I don't know that for sure).

Mainstream news report here.


__________________________________________
Frey effect info here if you are interested.

If what they're saying turns out to be true, then I can't imagine a more horrible method of harassment... but there's equipment out there I'm sure, that could easily pinpoint the source as it's happening. And not too expensive either. Am I right?

 

As noted in another post, crickets have been "implicated" in the "sonic weapon attack". I read the paper this morning (see PDF preprint). IMO, the authors do a good job of making a case for having identified (as a species of cricket) a sound that was recorded on site and at the time of the incidents. That is, personnel reported hearing these sounds during the time period of the incident(s).

As far as I can tell, they make no claim whatsoever about a connection between the sound in the health problems reported. You might not get that from reading the short media reports.

One such sound recording (apparently, many have been made) is available here.

Edited to add: One section in the abstract..."

While the temporal pulse structure in the recording is unlike any natural insect source, when the cricket call is played on a loudspeaker and recorded indoors, the interaction of reflected sound pulses yields a sound virtually indistinguishable from the AP sample. This provides strong evidence that an echoing cricket call, rather than a sonic attack or other technological device, is responsible for the sound in the released recording.

...is a bit puzzling to me. Are they saying that distortion was introduced by amplification and recording and that's why it is unlike any natural insect source? [/s] n/m

 

As noted in another post, crickets have been "implicated" in the "sonic weapon attack". I read the paper this morning (see PDF preprint). IMO, the authors do a good job of making a case for having identified (as a species of cricket) a sound that was recorded on site and at the time of the incidents. That is, personnel reported hearing these sounds during the time period of the incident(s).

As far as I can tell, they make no claim whatsoever about a connection between the sound in the health problems reported. You might not get that from reading the short media reports.

One such sound recording (apparently, many have been made) is available here.

Edited to add: One section in the abstract..."

While the temporal pulse structure in the recording is unlike any natural insect source, when the cricket call is played on a loudspeaker and recorded indoors, the interaction of reflected sound pulses yields a sound virtually indistinguishable from the AP sample. This provides strong evidence that an echoing cricket call, rather than a sonic attack or other technological device, is responsible for the sound in the released recording.

...is a bit puzzling to me. Are they saying that distortion was introduced by amplification and recording and that's why it is unlike any natural insect source?

I'm sure the audio recording system wasn't designed to maintain the time and phase information of the original cricket chirps (ultrasonic harmonics) as they echo'd off the walls of the indoor room. A natural insect sound source would be in the wild with minimal sound reflection. It's much like a sonar or radio operators ability to detect the primary information hidden in 'noise', once you know what to listen for it becomes fairly easy to understand the signal distortion.

 

I'm sure the audio recording system wasn't designed to maintain the time and phase information of the original cricket chirps (ultrasonic harmonics) as they echo'd off the walls of the indoor room. A natural insect sound source would be in the wild with minimal sound reflection. It's much like a sonar or radio operators ability to detect the primary information hidden in 'noise', once you know what to listen for it becomes fairly easy to understand the signal distortion.

Yeah,I reread it and figured that out...after adding the first edit I would say that they could have written it better, but truth is, I could have read it better. It is no rationalization, but I was reacting more, once again, to the "sound bite" news coverage. People got sick, some very sick, Naturally, one starts to look around and try to locate what is making you sick. They, again, naturally, hit upon these outdoor sounds and record them. Correlation does not imply causation. The authors, justifiably did the work to reasonably identify the sound.

Instead of noting that further analysis of a sound people heard while all this was going on, is not likely to be the source of the adverse health effects, they give us some watery, emotive, headline....and BTW it does nothing to detract from the possibility of the Frey effect,

 

Since I first heard about this, still wondering what could be the effect on deaf people. It could eventually help not to explain but, why not, discard options.

 

Yeah,I reread it and figured that out...after adding the first edit I would say that they could have written it better, but truth is, I could have read it better. It is no rationalization, but I was reacting more, once again, to the "sound bite" news coverage. People got sick, some very sick, Naturally, one starts to look around and try to locate what is making you sick. They, again, naturally, hit upon these outdoor sounds and record them. Correlation does not imply causation. The authors, justifiably did the work to reasonably identify the sound.

Instead of noting that further analysis of a sound people heard while all this was going on, is not likely to be the source of the adverse health effects, they give us some watery, emotive, headline....and BTW it does nothing to detract from the possibility of the Frey effect,

Personally I consider the Frey effect from microwave beams to be unlikely. I'm pretty sure a TEMPEST team would have detected electromagnetic signals of any frequency and power at the Embassy as a normal part of the security check.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)

 

Personally I consider the Frey effect from microwave beams to be unlikely. I'm pretty sure a TEMPEST team would have detected electromagnetic signals of any frequency and power at the Embassy as a normal part of the security check.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)

As you probably know, the Frey effect is only one phenomenon of MW exposure and it is similar to what some reported anecdotally.

Otherwise a couple of issues with what you are saying - nobody has come out and said something like "we monitor microwave transmissions and have not noticed any abnormalities contemporaneous with the report of adverse health effects" -at least not to my knowledge. I understand that there may be reasons why such information is not revealed if it does exist.

Also, such exposures could, conceivably, be focused and intermittent to avoid detection.

To me, MW exposure is, at present, a leading theory. That is my thinking (as I posted a bit ago), but I acknowledge that I certainly do not know what caused the situation. I completely disregard "psychological" explanations as bogus. Not that you are claiming as much at all, but there is simply no meaningful and relevant distinction between physiological and psychological in this case. All that is psychological has to be physical in my view. If one contends that the adverse health effects were psychogenic, whatever that means, I would look for simpler explanations.

 

As you probably know, the Frey effect is only one phenomenon of MW exposure and it is similar to what some reported anecdotally.

Otherwise a couple of issues with what you are saying - nobody has come out and said something like "we monitor microwave transmissions and have not noticed any abnormalities contemporaneous with the report of adverse health effects" -at least not to my knowledge. I understand that there may be reasons why such information is not revealed if it does exist.

Also, such exposures could, conceivably, be focused and intermittent to avoid detection.

To me, MW exposure is, at present, a leading theory. That is my thinking (as I posted a bit ago), but I acknowledge that I certainly do not know what caused the situation. I completely disregard "psychological" explanations as bogus. Not that you are claiming as much at all, but there is simply no meaningful and relevant distinction between physiological and psychological in this case. All that is psychological has to be physical in my view. If one contends that the adverse health effects were psychogenic, whatever that means, I would look for simpler explanations.

Without giving things away they are monitored (from audio to light frequencies) continuously at sensitive posts and operations like an Embassy in Havana where cryptographic equipment is installed and used on a daily basis to transmit highly classified (SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION) information about sources and methods. Sensitive posts and operations are also protected in a passive (shielding, etc ...) manner from these types of monitoring techniques in secure (RED) spaces.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070408221244/http://cryptome.org/tempest-2-95.htm

I would have expected a team to be deployed and equipment installed at the home or hotel of anyone remotely suspected of being affected by a possible MW threat.

From the paper:
Cuban government report suggested that the Jamaican field cricket Gryllus assimilis was responsible.

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/the-real-story-behind-the-havana-embassy-mystery

Some American experts who were able to review the early evidence concurred. “It could certainly all be psychogenic,” Stanley Fahn, a neurologist at Columbia University, told Science magazine.

If you retrace the key events and anomalies of the outbreak at the embassy in Havana, every step of the way corresponds to those in classic cases of conversion disorder. The first few staffers hit by the symptoms were C.I.A. agents working on hostile soil—one of the most stressful positions imaginable. The initial conversation between Patient Zero and Patient One referenced only the odd sound; neither experienced any symptoms. Then, a few months later, a third embassy official reported that he was losing his hearing due to a “powerful beam of high-pitched sound.” As word spread quickly throughout the small, tight-knit complex of diplomats and other staff, Patient Zero helped sound the alarm. “He was lobbying, if not coercing, people to report symptoms and to connect the dots,” says Fulton Armstrong, a former C.I.A. officer who worked undercover in Cuba.

https://qz.com/1113692/cuba-sonic-a...ets-and-cicadas-for-injuries-to-us-diplomats/

“We compared the spectrums of the sounds and evidently this common sound is very similar to the sound of a cicada,” Lt. Col. Juan Carlos Molina, a Cuban government expert, said on the television broadcast Alleged Sonic Attacks. The program also claimed sufficiently loud insect noises could “produce hearing loss, irritation and hypertension in situations of prolonged exposure.”

 

Do you believe that the symptoms were psychogenic, is that what *you* think, or is that just what you quoted someone else as saying that it could be psychogenic based upon preliminary reports?

 

Do you believe that the symptoms were psychogenic, is that what *you* think, or is that just what you quoted someone else as saying that it could be psychogenic based upon preliminary reports?

From the basis of known evidence today it's likely psychogenic. I, like most people believed that some sort of sonic attack was happening in the beginning but the wild explanations of MW weapons, ultrasonic pulse weapons and detail facts on how the first reporters described those sounds combined with the chain of events after that justifiably IMO made me think it was unlikely an attack by 'Cuban Agents' designed harm people or a new type of spying technology.

 

From the basis of known evidence today it's likely psychogenic. I, like most people believed that some sort of sonic attack was happening in the beginning but the wild explanations of MW weapons, ultrasonic pulse weapons and detail facts on how the first reporters described those sounds combined with the chain of events after that justifiably IMO made me think it was unlikely an attack by 'Cuban Agents' designed harm people or a new type of spying technology.

That is your opinion and you are entitled to your opinion and I respect that. I have never said that it could NOT be psychogenic. There is simply no compelling evidence that I see that it IS psychogenic. Furthermore, claiming symptoms are psychogenic based solely on the inability to otherwise explain, or believe an explanation is, at best, weak. My opinion, as I have already stated remains unchanged and will continue unchanged unless I see evidence otherwise.

To me, MW exposure is, at present, a leading theory. That is my thinking (as I posted a bit ago), but I acknowledge that I certainly do not know what caused the situation. /-/. If one contends that the adverse health effects were psychogenic, whatever that means, I would look for simpler explanations.

Moreover, just as you have cited your experiences as leading to your opinions on a different matter, in the instant case, my opinion includes the experience of more than three post-PhD decades of research including preclinical research in PTSD and mTBI.

So, we disagree and I will leave it at that.

 

That is your opinion and you are entitled to your opinion and I respect that. I have never said that it could NOT be psychogenic. There is simply no compelling evidence that I see that it IS psychogenic. Furthermore, claiming symptoms are psychogenic based solely on the inability to otherwise explain, or believe an explanation is, at best, weak. My opinion, as I have already stated remains unchanged and will continue unchanged unless I see evidence otherwise.



Moreover, just as you have cited your experiences as leading to your opinions on a different matter, in the instant case, my opinion includes the experience of more than three post-PhD decades of research including preclinical research in PTSD and mTBI.

So, we disagree and I will leave it at that.

Occam's razor

 

Occam's razor

...and you think psychogenic processes are the simpler explanation? Wow, we don't just disagree.