Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 67 posts

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#21

Post by akyu »

thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #6

Where’s the part where they send a device to detect microwaves or sonic waves, and find them? How come it doesn’t occur to journalists to ask this? As per the article, they found the signal in Moscow, and there weren’t even symptoms to prompt them to do so. Another commenter mentioned “triangulation”. It’s less than that. There is no reported observation of a signal of any kind. History Channel “ghost hunters” are mo…

You're assuming that they would get an answer if they asked those questions. I highly doubt that.

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#22

Post by akyu »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #20
thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #6

Where’s the part where they send a device to detect microwaves or sonic waves, and find them? How come it doesn’t occur to journalists to ask this? As per the article, they found the signal in Moscow, and there weren’t even symptoms to prompt them to do so. Another commenter mentioned “triangulation”. It’s less than that. There is no reported observation of a signal of any kind. History Channel “ghost hunters” are mo…

Yep, detecing microwaves is easy, and the equipment cheap and available to everyone (relatively cheap, compared to other stuff embassys buy). Depending on the frequency, it should be detectable even with $10 rtl-sdr sticks with direct sampling. I'm fairly sure that most electrical engineering students could find out if their dorm rooms were targeted by microwaves, so why not the embassy of one of the richest and most…

They do detect them.

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#23

Post by AshamedCaptain »

tiahura wrote: post #3

I would assume that shortly after Havana, most embassies installed equipment to detect sonic or microwave blasts. Given that we haven’t heard anything about these sensors being tripped, I’m going to assume anything after Havana is mass hysteria.

why the downvotes? mass hysteria is the most likely explanation, and would still be even if you had evidence of a couple non-hysteria related cases (Such is the power of nocebos), but we don't even have that.

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#24

Post by ajsnigrutin »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #14
JoshTko wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many possible reasons. If Russia is behind this, it's a great proof of concept test of low traceable weapon that can target and disable high value targets of relatively high profile.

There are only stupid reasons to test a secret weapon in the exact place you want to secretly use it later. So these aren't intended as tests, they are either intended as attacks or else just something that USG employees get for other reasons.

Yep, you test it on your own homeless people, so if you fuck up, noone finds out. If you target a powerfull enemy, you do that intentionally. And with all the speculation about microwaves, noone ever though to actually measure/detect them? EE collage students could do that, ham operators do that (and triangulate them) for fun and competition, and the USA/CIA/... couldn't?

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#25

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

Interestingly enough in the unexplainable podcast episode a doctor suggested a functional disorder- when the brain reroutes itself and assumes it’s damaged when it’s not. It seemed to a layperson, myself, more reasonable than a superweapon deployed internationally that fucks with but doesn’t kill people.

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#26

Post by pjc50 »

belter wrote: post #19

Maybe somebody was playing with the current or future generation of the portable continuous wave generator we know the NSA has...Things got out of hand? Surely there is one deployed in each Embassy? See as of 57 min and 32 sec: https://cdn.media.ccc.de/congress/2013/mp4-web/30c3-5713-en-... Edit: In case you missed the detail...From the slide shown at 58 min and 35 sec notice it says up to...1 Kilowatt

Do you have a textual reference as well please?

But that would be a plausible reason for why nobody gets to the bottom of this: they do find the source, but are immediately informed that it's a classified US weapon and they're not allowed to talk about it. Including telling their fellow US embassy employees who are experiencing headaches.

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#27

Post by oxymoran »

api wrote: post #4

The biggest mystery to me is why the hell someone would do this. What are they gaining? Are they trying to frame someone else? Just disrupt operations? For the spy vs spy lulz? Second biggest mystery is how they haven't just triangulated these. Someone in signals intelligence told me once that signal jamming is not a big problem on the battlefield because a signal jammer is also a bright RF beacon that says "shoot mi…

This is why: “ Five years on, reports now number in the hundreds and, the BBC has been told, span every continent, leaving a real impact on the US's ability to operate overseas. ”

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#28

Post by alistaira »

api wrote: post #4

The biggest mystery to me is why the hell someone would do this. What are they gaining? Are they trying to frame someone else? Just disrupt operations? For the spy vs spy lulz? Second biggest mystery is how they haven't just triangulated these. Someone in signals intelligence told me once that signal jamming is not a big problem on the battlefield because a signal jammer is also a bright RF beacon that says "shoot mi…

For the second, I get the impression that this is less of a case of a building being bathed in EM radiation (as a jammer might) but (excuse my unscientific attempt at this description) several beams of EM radiation creating a superposition at their point of intersection in 3D space.

The latter case would be harder to triangulate as you'd need to have multiple detectors positioned along each beam line in order to determine the range of each emitter.

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#29

Post by KingOfCoders »

belter wrote: post #19

Maybe somebody was playing with the current or future generation of the portable continuous wave generator we know the NSA has...Things got out of hand? Surely there is one deployed in each Embassy? See as of 57 min and 32 sec: https://cdn.media.ccc.de/congress/2013/mp4-web/30c3-5713-en-... Edit: In case you missed the detail...From the slide shown at 58 min and 35 sec notice it says up to...1 Kilowatt

That was my idea too, with so many embassies hit, shouldn't it be something in the embassy? (Occams razor)

Re: ‘Havana syndrome’ and the mystery of the microwaves

#30

Post by boomboomsubban »

akyu wrote: post #21
thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #6

Where’s the part where they send a device to detect microwaves or sonic waves, and find them? How come it doesn’t occur to journalists to ask this? As per the article, they found the signal in Moscow, and there weren’t even symptoms to prompt them to do so. Another commenter mentioned “triangulation”. It’s less than that. There is no reported observation of a signal of any kind. History Channel “ghost hunters” are mo…

You're assuming that they would get an answer if they asked those questions. I highly doubt that.

Then the US government is also at fault for knowingly putting their employees in dangerous positions without their knowledge.

That's potentially worse, as it basically would mean the US is using the same techniques on god knows who else. The entire thing could have been friendly fire in that case.

Post reply on HN