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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.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 19 2017, @02:21PM
There's an amazing nothing burger ness to the whole sonic weapon story. No names times places reasons evidence. Just "some dude was sonic wounded, trust me". Uh huh nobody from the .gov never told a lie, so sure LOL. Remember when there was endless speculation in the media about Trump and Russia? This sonic story is like that with 1000x less evidence and logic. The sonic story is beneath weekly world news level journalism, stories about Elvis sightings are literally higher class of journalism.
My guess is something else is being covered up. As is usual with coverups the truth is probably less exciting than most would hope.
Assuming there's any sonic truth at all, some idiot contractor was sent to install something like a LRAD sonic weapon as a non-lethal emergency crowd defense and after installation the moron (or perhaps a different moron) accidentally set it off during some embassy outdoor cubano sandwich (delicious sandwich BTW, I like them) picnic or BBQ or some thing and being a last ditch safety thing they can't pull AC power because the generator fires up to keep it running and its in a locked cage in a locked room so they can't hit the off button. And the ambassador is already an old deaf guy so he doesn't care and the people at the picnic and the staff and guards can't run for it because there's no riot so why run and the old guy in charge can't hear it so they gotta go home obedient, but deaf. And then there's a huge coverup because technically anti-civilian sound weapons aren't allowed in the lease or some crazy thing. I mean, given the choice of ending up like 10s Benghazi victims or 70s Tehran victims, going home deaf sounds like a great tradeoff, it can't be much worse than flashbang grenades anyway, but if some moron contractor plus or minus some moron guards accidentally set off a semi-illegal semi-secret weapon in peacetime, then its just a huge mess of coverup and ohshit.jpg memes and stuff like that.
Or it has nothing to do with hearing, other than HIPPA means the docs will STFU and there's no obvious visual damage AKA nothing happened at all with respect to hearing or sound or sonic weapons, but there was a MAJOR bust related to sex crimes or drug use/smuggling or someone totally Fed up humint intel gathering and heads (with perfectly unharmed ears...) rolled and got sent home. Perhaps for the hollywood script, some Marine guard was fucking some high ranked officials unsatisfied trophy wife and before (or ... after?) the Cubans could find out and blackmail the guard into giving up the usual secret squirrel BS (because every horny E-1 buck private guard has the nuclear missile launch codez, LOL), someone in charge sent everyone home for a good old fashioned ass whipping about not getting into compromising positions in a foreign land. No one, and I mean no one, on any side, for any reason, has anything at all to gain by going public with anything other than "my ears are burning" content free cover story. Why'd you get sent home, private? He can't say he was fucking the asst ambassadors wife, but he can get away with "I wuz hit with a sonic weapon". Why'd you get sent home, asst ambassadors trophy wife? She can't say she was banging every horny young male with two legs because her husband can't get it up anymore, but she can get away with "Some classified sonic weapon" story that no one can prove or disprove. Internal security can't say they got sent home for not noticing and reporting the shenanigans because they were smoking cuban weed all day, etc etc etc.