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posted by FatPhil on Thursday October 19 2017, @01:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the hawkwind-fans dept.

The State Department has not provided further details about the medical condition of the affected staffers. But government officials have suggested anonymously that the diplomats may have been assaulted with some sort of sonic weapon.

Experts in acoustics, however, say that's a theory more appropriate to a James Bond movie.

Sound can cause discomfort and even serious harm, and researchers have explored the idea of sonic weaponry for years. But scientists doubt a hidden ultrasound weapon can explain what happened in Cuba.

"I'd say it's fairly implausible," said Jürgen Altmann, a physicist at the Technische Universität Dortmund in Germany and an expert on acoustics.

Once again, the New York Times gets it wrong. James Bond is not the movie genre they're looking for.

mrpg also brings us this less-critical AP report, What Americans Heard in Cuba Attacks: The Sound.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday October 19 2017, @02:23PM (3 children)

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Thursday October 19 2017, @02:23PM (#584556)

    What would the point of secretly attacking US diplomats with sound even be?

    If you really wanted to cause damage, and didn't care who reported what, you'd just fire an RPG at them or a car bomb or something. But the attacks weren't lethal anyway so what was that really the goal? Brain damage? They'll know to look for it though!

    If you really wanted to cause anonymous damage, there's surely less obvious ways you're capable of if you could do this deliberately. Poisons of various kinds, for example. Social engineering techniques could damage their position far more subtly. They might not even realize you did anything at all.

    I think it's more plausible this was some kind of accident, misunderstanding, or malfunction. Whose equipment it was, its purpose, and why it malfunctioned are more interesting to speculate about...

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @03:49PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @03:49PM (#584611)

    "What would the point of secretly attacking US diplomats with sound even be?"

    These sort of weapons are typically used to put the target under psychological stress. Typically this intended to encourage irrational behavior, which is useful for later exploiting during negotiations.

    As Cuba is probably involved in ongoing trade negotiations with the U.S. it is possible that either or both sides are using this sort of harassment against each other. It is a type of criminal battery. There have been cases tried in the U.S. related to electronic harassment.

    But it is extremely difficult to prove. Made even more so, but the years and years of disinformation intentionally injected into the public dialog. This is not a kook issue. It is a real thing. The predisposition to assume that is a kook issue, is because of disinformation intended to make it seem that way.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:24PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @06:24PM (#584708)

      Causing stress is not the same as causing brain and other damage (as claimed in some reports). And if you accidentally cause brain damage, why would you keep doing it?

      Whatever it is there is little gain for Cuba to do such attacks and more to lose.

      It's much better to secretly spy on the diplomats. Wikileaks has shown that a number of diplomats have juicy secrets.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @08:08PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @08:08PM (#584828)

        "Causing stress is not the same as causing brain and other damage"

        Actually stress causes high blood pressure, which can cause a myriad of problems including strokes. So yes it can. Though with things like this you have to accommodate the signal to noise ratio. If you get a kernel of truth your doing pretty good.