War on the Rocks publishes a first-person commentary by intelligence professional Marc Polymeropoulos on Havana Syndrome, positioning the platform as a venue for defense and foreign affairs debate and analysis. The site structurally supports Article 19 (free expression) through author identification and commentary framing, but substantially undermines Article 12 (privacy) through extensive tracking infrastructure (Google Analytics, conversion tracking, Drip marketing) without visible consent mechanisms. The membership paywall creates barriers to Articles 19, 25, and 26 by restricting free access to analysis and information.
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Note: “We were right” here means “it’s a real thing,” but the article has almost nothing concrete to offer about what actually is going on or who is responsible.
My feeling has always been that there was no interest in investigating this.
The government can skirt medical help, can send the next batch of officers in without problems and doesn't need to confront an adversary that is politically.. difficult under Trump. It's certainly no coincidence that Russia would start using something like this in Cuba, a friendly state, and not say.. France. Where the local police and spy agencies could investigate and observe.
Just imagine what would have to happen if someone acknowledged Havanah syndrome is real.
Next up, burn pits cause lung damage and brain damage too.
At the core of "Havana Syndrome" lies the idea that Cuba and/or Russia have managed to develop energy weapons so advanced that the American military command won't even entertain the thought of them existing. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
I put my bet on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness
If the authorities have made the same conclusion, it would be very difficult to tell the affected individuals that.
This is since there is a misconception that mass psychosis A) only happens to mentally "weak" persons. B) Symptoms are made up/"just in your imagination"
But the symptoms are very much real, and it's not something that is easily treated.
How mass psychosis can lead to actual medical illness is unknown, but the cause and effect is documented.
For that reason it might appear as a cover up, when authorities avoid giving answers.
Even though I'm familiar with the science behind mass psychosis illness, I would still probably have difficulties accepting that as an explanation if I were in a similar situation.
Not gonna lie, it's impossible to feel bad for someone who has been in the CIA for decades.
A small-scale imperial boomerang. The gaslighting and other tactics coming to bite you in the ass for a change, instead of some nation where US has "interests".
Fentanyl has become a huge issue with street drugs. It's being laced in other drugs. It's an incredibly strong opiate and because the mixing is imprecise, it can be easy to overdose unintentionally.
What's more interesting is the hysteria around fentanyl, which is completely made up and has no basis in fact, but is perpetuated by police unions and media outlets who are likely currying favor with police unions or just trading on the hysteria.
In it's purest form, fentanyl can exist in a powder or liquid form. I could give you a massive quantity of either and you could handle them completely fine. How do I know this? Because health workers do this all the time. It's like handling talcum powder. I mean you would probably want to wash your hands and you wouldn't want to lick it but there are no fumes and you can't be poisoned or dosed just by being in the same room as fentanyl in any form.
Yet this completely made up fear has caused law enforcement officers to believe they've suffered from fentanyl exposure. For example [1]:
> Results
> Nearly all leaders and officers interviewed wrongly believed that dermal exposure to fentanyl was deadly and expressed fear about such exposure on scene. Officers had a lack of education about fentanyl exposure and faulty or dubious sources of information about it.
and [2]:
> Police in the United States have told implausible stories about airborne fentanyl exposures for years. The real symptoms appear related to panic attacks and the psychological trauma of policing.
So something that's completely made up can lead people to create their own symptoms. It also fits the narrative of people believing their jobs are more dangerous than they actually are.
So, back to Havana Syndrome. I've always been convinced that it's completely fake. There are probably people who like the narrative because it makes the Russians or Cubans scary with some unknown tech. And that means you need to research your own versions, right?
One possibility I might believe is that these people were exposed to something most likely from the CIA itself. You might say "the CIA wouldn't do this to their own". Think again [3].
So to believe any of this I want these people to release their medical records and have some independent medical analysis. Does the author really have TBI? Was there some other cause? Did this person suffer, say, an injury in a motor vehicle accident and is intentionally or unintentionally blaming it on Havana Syndrome?
I listen to a lot of conspiracy podcasts for fun. This is the one conspiracy that's so mundane it does not even make it on many of the shows. If someone brings it up everyone is like, "well yeah of course they have that shit". Its not cool enough for the conspiracy shows/grifts.
I'm not sure having a microbiologist on to talk about RF energy weapons was a good choice. I also have significant doubts about this "black market Russian RF weapon" storyline. Just because you found an item on the black market doesn't mean it exists in general, is a viable weapon, or can be used to explain "Havanna Syndrome."
There's almost no data with which to draw any conclusions about this.
It seems convenient that this pops up right at the moment the government could use a distraction.
Pop the magnetron out of a microwave and direct it towards someone's head [0], and I imagine they're not gonna have a great time. And that's with parts available in many average homes.
The Active Denial System [1] works based on these principles, but different frequencies.
> but that kind of person can't get a security clearance or get taken seriously by the State Department.
This feels similar to the early Area 51 law suits which were thrown out because the government denied the facility existed. I feel that yes, the government was aware of the situation but downplayed it because they have something to hide.
My tin foil hat explanation is that the US government was fully aware of what was happening. Why is unknown though I could guess that A. the US denied knowledge of such weapons to give plausible deniability which leads to B. The US deployed such a weapon on premises to use/test against Cubans and inadvertently sickened their own people in an accident.
I don't doubt Cuba could initiate such an attack but I find it very unlikely the US would be befuddled when the US government along with others have developed and experimented with sonic weapons. Given the recent trends towards more authoritarian governments these weapons are easy to deploy against citizens. This article was posted to hn recently: https://earshotngo.substack.com/p/sonic-attack-on-a-silent-v...
This was the point I made in another comment here. My bet is the US deployed the weapon and accidentally sickened their own people. So of course they play stupid and deny that any such tech could exist.
That should disqualify them from ever being taken seriously on anything. Would you trust water from a well that was once poisoned? Even if you scrubbed every inch with soap and water, wouldn't there still be some residue that you'd rather not ingest? And I don't think people's inner selves can actually be cleaned, nor do they even want to, usually.
There's also the chance it's not a weapon, but something that mistakenly turned into a weapon when it was tested on live subjects.
I don't think randomly attacking embassy staff (iirc, not everyone was CIA - there were just desk people affected) makes sense for anyone to do, but trying to listen on them and fucking up sounds right up their (or our) alley.
> won't even entertain the thought of them existing
Careful, it's also possible that they have thought very hard about such things, and they've decided that revealing what they know would lose them a technological edge.
In other words, what if the CIA/DOD already knows there's a class of devices which could explain the problems, and the denial is about maintaining secrecy over their own operational capabilities?
Imagine something similar in the 1980s: "This tragic mid-air collision was obviously caused by faulty radar or gross pilot error by at least one of the two military planes... Our brightest minds have looked very hard at the problem and there is no such thing as a 'stealth' airplane which doesn't show up on radar."
>At the core of "Havana Syndrome" lies the idea that Cuba and/or Russia have managed to develop energy weapons so advanced that the American military command won't even entertain the thought of them existing.
I just don't think that's true at all. The answer could easily be that Cuba and Russia have developed energy weapons that we only know about from classified sources and therefore cannot discuss their existence.
The assumption with these weapons was that they would require too much energy to be portable enough to be undetectable in all of these circumstances (at least based on other reporting on the subject).
If the device doesn't require a lot of power, then it's entirely possible that American military commanders and research leadership would miss it.
Add to that an incentive to avoid helping the victims from a cost and overhead perspective, and you get a big ol' mess.
Russia developed a less lethal directed energy weapon which is essentially a microwave oven radio signal switched off and on very quickly (likely something like a GHz signal with a highly directional antenna being switched at kHz)
Eyewitness reports at the Maduro kidnapping raid and a recent leak in the last few days regarding the US purchasing such a weapon from Russia and testing it at least on animals tie all of this together.
If that is so, why not acknowledge that the current working theory is that it is psychogenic, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
The fact that psychogenic illness is not simply “weak” people, but a real phenomenon, strongly supports the fairness and necessity of offering treatment.
The wikipedia article says when authorities publicly take the effects seriously it can induce more cases. But the example was of getting help from a witch doctor, which was a remarkably dysfunctional “validation” to add to an already complex problem.
Another very dysfunctional “validation”: official denial, avoidance, obvious lack of work on solutions or mitigations, and all the trappings of a cover up!
Being direct has so many benefits, vs indirect denial or bad faith “treatments”.
It would be a reassuring response, to those in the same context without symptoms who are concerned about their own health.
Direct responses, with care given, are also in a better position to find treatments for psychogenic symptoms, preventative practices that reduce vulnerability, or alter working theories of cause, as any other evidence emerges.
Chronic anxiety and anxiety attacks are “psychosomatic” on an individual basis. But very real, often caused or impacted by working conditions, and important to diagnose and treat. Psychogenic illness should be the same. “Illness” is not a cause limited concept.
As a reminder, they are likely subject to the lifetime prepublication review[1] which requires anything published to be reviewed by the agency prior to publishing.
MAE is kind of obvious, because healthy ears are incredibly sensitive. 0 dbSPL translates to attowatts on the eardrum displacing it just a few pm, with hair cells firing on sub-nm movements (after mechanical amplification). It is completely unsurprising that just the thermal effect of RF being pulsed in the general direction of the head can become audible in the right circumstances.
While there have probably many people that have been affected by the secondary "mass psychosis" effect of havana syndrome, it seems unlikely that is the primary cause considering the device is now out in the wild:
The most obvious and large scale example of this I’ve seen is carpal tunnel syndrome in the 1990s and early 2000s. everybody had carpal tunnel syndrome and then just one day it all went away. not that the people who were suffering with it were faking anything. it’s just what was on everybody’s mind and then it wasn’t.
I read through the entire article and couldn't find the part where this phenomenon causes or otherwise explains intense pain and detectable traumatic brain injuries.
Article authored by Marc Polymeropoulos (identified intelligence professional) presenting first-person account of lived experience with Havana Syndrome. Headline 'We Were Right About Havana Syndrome' frames author's validation of claims. Commentary section indicates editorial space for viewpoint expression. Content involves public information-seeking and debate on defense/intelligence matters per site mission.
FW Ratio: 56%
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Article byline identifies author as Marc Polymeropoulos with author profile link.
Article classified as 'Commentary' section indicating opinion/analysis content.
Site mission states platform enables 'analysis and debate on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.'
First-person narrative ('I experienced a sudden, debilitating health incident') indicates lived testimony.
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Author's identified expertise and first-person account signal support for informed public discourse on intelligence matters.
Commentary section designation transparently frames content as opinion rather than news reporting.
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Site positioning as 'debate' platform suggests structural commitment to Article 19 values despite paywall.
Article engages with cultural heritage and shared defense/intelligence discourse. Platform explicitly supports 'analysis and debate on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs,' enabling participation in cultural/intellectual common life around security issues.
FW Ratio: 60%
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Platform mission emphasizes 'debate' and 'analysis' on defense matters, enabling intellectual participation.
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Site explicitly describes itself as 'platform for analysis and debate on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.' Memberful integration enables subscription access to commentary. Author identification provides transparency. Structure supports discourse but membership paywall restricts free access to some content.
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Headline 'We Were Right About Havana Syndrome' uses affirming language ('were right') that presupposes validation of contested claims rather than presenting neutrally.
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Article byline prominently features author's identity as intelligence professional, leveraging institutional authority to validate personal account.