Havana Syndrome

LETA

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Image: US State Department

The mysterious neurological condition has gone global. This week, Vice President Kamala Harris' visit to Vietnam was delayed after intelligence reports warned of a "possible anomalous health incident" at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi. Last month, authorities in Austria reported yet another incident of Havana Syndrome. And earlier this year, National Security Council staffers were struck by the debilitating symptoms in Washington, D.C.

Havana Syndrome was first reported back in 2016 by American diplomats working at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba. Victims of the attack describe being overcome by a sudden sensation of dizziness, fatigue, headache, loss of hearing, memory and balance. After several years of careful study, a panel of experts from the National Academies of Sciences concluded that the most likely cause of Havana Syndrome was some sort of "directed, pulsed radiofrequency energy."

Although Havana Syndrome is now a global phenomenon mainly affecting American personnel abroad, the likely culprit is yet to be uncovered. Intelligence agencies point to Russia and China as possible agents behind the attacks, but the evidence is largely circumstantial. The logistics involved in deploying such a weapon on every continent where U.S. staff are present, without being detected by some of the electronic countermeasures placed in American foreign missions, indicates a level of sophistication far superior to any energy weapon in the U.S. inventory.