The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine last month published a report summarizing its investigation into the illnesses of 50 American diplomats in Cuba in 2016 and China in 2017. The illnesses are typically referred to as the Havana Syndrome.

According to the report, “An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies,” the symptoms experienced by the subjects of the investigation manifested like concussions, but without force to the head:

“For some of these patients, their case began with the sudden onset of a loud noise, perceived to have directional features, and accompanied by pain in one or both ears or across a broad region of the head, and in some cases, a sensation of head pressure or vibration, dizziness, followed in some cases by tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties.”

The National Academies report concluded that there were “multiple hypotheses” as to what caused these symptoms, “but evidence has been lacking, no hypothesis has been proven and the circumstances remain unclear.”

However some experts believe microwave weapon attacks to be the most plausible explanation for the illnesses reported by diplomats and family members.

Weaponizing microwave technology

Microwave auditory effect, also called the Frey effect after the scientist who discovered it in 1961, is the human perception of sound and speech in the brain, induced by pulsed and directed radio frequencies. This technology has been weaponized by Russia, China and the United States.

In 2018, the New York Times reported on illnesses of diplomats and their families:

James C. Lin of the University of Illinois, a leading investigator of the Frey effect, described the diplomatic ills as plausibly arising from microwave beams. Dr. Lin is the editor-in-chief of Bio Electro Magnetics, a peer-reviewed journal that explores the effects of radio waves and electromagnetic fields on living things. In his paper, he said high-intensity beams of microwaves could have caused the diplomats to experience not just loud noises but nausea, headaches and vertigo, as well as possible brain-tissue injury. The beams, he added, could be fired covertly, hitting ‘only the intended target.’”

The Times article included a reference to the work of Beatrice A. Golomb, a medical doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who, according to the Times, has to date made the “most detailed medical case” for microwave strikes as the cause of the illnesses experienced by diplomats:

“In a forthcoming paper to be published in October in Neural Computation, a peer-reviewed journal of the MIT Press, she lays out potential medical evidence for Cuban microwave strikes. She compared the symptoms of the diplomats in Cuba to those reported for individuals said to be suffering from radio-frequency sickness. The health responses of the two groups, Dr. Golomb wrote, ‘conform closely.’”

The Times also reported on the opinion of a lawyer representing some of the victims:

“But Mr. Zaid, the Washington lawyer who represents eight of the diplomats and family members, said microwave attacks may have injured his clients. ‘It’s sort of naïve to think this just started now,’ he said. Globally, he added, covert strikes with the potent beams appear to have been going on for decades.”

The U.S. military’s role in microwave weapons

While many sources such as The Diplomat are quick to attribute the use of covert microwave weapons exclusively to Russia or China, in fact, the U.S. has a long history of developing the very same weapons.

In 2002, U.S. Air Force scientists invented (Patent Numbers US6,470,214 B1, US6,587,729B2) a method for encoding and transmitting speech by means of radio frequency. The patents report states: “The invention provides a new and useful encoding for speech on an RF carrier such that the speech will be intelligible to a human subject by means of the RF hearing demodulation phenomena.”

The lead inventor, Jim O’Loughlin, explained in an Air Force memorandum how the power of radio frequency signals could be modulated to replicate the amplitude-frequency characteristics of audible speech input, and then thermally induce nerve signals that result in the hearing of the transmitted, encoded speech in the brain:

“Everything of an acoustic nature is sent to the brain from the inner ear by nerve signals, the brain cannot hear acoustic signals directly nor can it hear RF signals directly. Everything of an acoustic nature received by the inner ear is from two possible sources, the air acoustic stimulation, such as speech, passed through the outer ear, eardrum, ossicles, and cochlea; or by the conduction of an acoustic signal through the bone/tissue structure of the head directly to the cochlea. Within the cochlea is the basilar membrane that converts the acoustic input to nerve signals, be the original source of the acoustic signal from the outer ear or from bone/tissue conduction. The nerve signals from the basilar membrane go to the brain and the brain does not recognize nor distinguish between the two primary acoustic origins. The acoustic stimulation in material such as bone/tissue is a mechanical vibration, or pressure or relative motion of the material in the form of compressions and rarefactions that compromise the textbook definition of sound or acoustic waves. This stimulation can be accomplished by the application of direct mechanical force or as in the case of the invention by thermally induced-mechanical force or pressure wave. When material such as bone/tissue is heated it expands or moves and if the application of heat is applied at a periodic rate, a thermal-mechanical force and corresponding acoustic pressure wave is the result.”

In 2003, the U.S. Navy funded a government contract to design a microwave auditory effect system called the Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio (MEDUSA) to incapacitate attackers or mobs and to protect assets. The Navy reported experimental success in phase 1 of the contract:

“MAE results in a strong sound sensation in the human head when it is irradiated with specifically selected microwave pulses of low energy. Through the combination of pulse parameters and pulse power, it is possible to raise the auditory sensation to the ‘discomfort’ level, deterring personnel from entering a protected perimeter or, if necessary, temporarily incapacitating particular individuals.”

The military regards this technology, which can remotely target individuals or crowds with painful sounds that cannot be blocked out, as non-lethal and having only a temporary effect.

But some scientists worry about long-term brain damage and adverse side effects. A 2008 press release in New Scientist described the effect of the MEDUSA weapon this way: “short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull.”

Psychotronic weaponry, microwave syndrome

In 2001, the Pentagon announced another crowd-control energy weapon called the Active Denial System. The New York Times reported that “the weapon would fire bursts of electromagnetic energy capable of causing burning sensations on the skin of people standing as far as 700 yards away — without actually burning them.”

According to a Pentagon informational video, the Active Denial System uses millimeter waves, instead of the microwaves in the previously described weapons. This raises a new level of concern for the implementation of 5G, a millimeter wave technology, potentially becoming weaponized in civil unrest under a tyrannical government.

While the U.S. media alludes to a mysterious “Havana Syndrome” when reporting on the 2016 U.S. Embassy attacks in Cuba, the scientific community refers to these diagnosable symptoms as microwave syndrome or radiofrequency sickness as established in 1998.

Technically, the illness is called microwave radiation syndrome, but that term is not used today to avoid instilling fear in the general public of actual radiation exposure. The term “microwave radiation” began to disappear from literature in the 1960s when the public filed several legal challenges against military radar systems near valuable coastal properties, citing concerns about health and property devaluation. The term was replaced with microwave energy, microwave fields and radiofrequency fields in military and commercial enterprises.

A 2003 study by E.A. Navarro, “The Microwave Syndrome: A Preliminary Study in Spain,” published in Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, reported the short-term detrimental health effects of exposure to microwave and radiofrequency fields:

“Symptoms and signs include headache, fatigue, irritability, loss of appetite, sleepiness, difficulties in concentration or memory, depression, and emotional instability. This clinical syndrome is generally reversible if RF exposure is discontinued. Another frequently described manifestation is a set of labile functional cardiovascular changes including bradycardia, arterial hypertension, or hypotension (Johnson-Liakouris, 1998). This form of neurocirculatory asthenia is also attributed to nervous system influence. More serious but less frequent neurologic or neuropsychiatric disturbances have occasionally been described as a diencephalic syndrome (Johnson-Liakouris, 1998). All these disturbances following low level exposures (of the order of microwatts/cm2) have been reported for many years from Eastern Europe.”

Navarro also reported the long-term detrimental health effects of microwave radiation:

“Insomnia, cancer, leukemia in children, and brain tumors are the clinical entities more frequently described (Dolk et al., 1997; Hocking et al., 1996; Maskarinec et al., 1994; Minder and Pfluger, 2001; Selvin et al., 1992).” Because the brain consists of a high water content, it is one of the most likely places for a hotspot to form from microwave radiation. The human head becomes a receiving antenna for the microwaves.”

Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) Fields also lower melatonin, a powerful antioxidant that supports immune function, according to a 1993 study in the Journal of General Psychology.

It is suspicious that the U.S. has taken such an inconclusive position on the diagnoses of the recent microwave weapon attacks in Cuba and China given the precedent of the Moscow microwave attacks in the 1950s. Mary Ellen O’Connor summarized the history of the Moscow attacks in 1993, in the Journal of General Psychology:

“From 1953 to 1976, the Soviets directed microwave radiation at the U.S. embassy in Moscow from the roof of an adjacent building. The possibility that this microwave exposure could induce health problems in the embassy staff prompted the government to begin classified research programs on the health effects of microwave exposure. One of these programs, called “Project Pandora,” was organized and administered by the psychology division of the psychiatry research section of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). Public attention was not drawn to these events in Moscow and the question of possible health effects from NIEM exposure until the 1976 release of information by the U.S. State Department accusing the Soviet Union of bombarding the U.S. embassy in Moscow with microwave radiation for the purpose of disturbing the health of the staff.”

Many of the afflicted diplomats will retire early with debilitating neurological symptoms likely caused by pulsed microwave frequencies. What will be the effect of continuous millimeter frequency exposure on the general public?

The lack of transparency around the recent attack on U.S. diplomats with a weaponized form of this technology, combined with the fact that hundreds of medical doctors have requested a moratorium on 5G RF technology until the negative health effects are properly studied and evaluated, should give the general public reason to reevaluate the unsubstantiated safety claims of 5G.

Unfortunately, the telecommunications industry has convinced governments to believe in a no-risk paradigm for 5G by influencing scientific reports and committees using biased individuals with conflicts of interest.