Microwave weapons?

[djacobow]

New York Times says the unexplained US embassy sicknesses in China and Cuba could have been microwave weapons.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-cuba-microwave.html

What is the EEvblog consensus on this? I have to say that though I know such weapons probably exist, I'm very surprised that the embassies were not equipped to detect such weapons. I mean, it's not like wideband antennas and SA's don't exist. And unless those beams are really focused to human head size (seems hard to do from a van parked outside) then there would be ample signal to detect, right?

If the beams really are tight, I guess you could issue staff personal radios to alert when microwave energy over a certain power level is present. This could even be done pretty cheaply, I'd think.

[coppercone2]

this might have been a botched espionage attempt to overcome tempest protections, not a intentional weapon to cause a stir

they probobly would have bombed the fucking thing if they wanted to cause a stir, cuban goverment is nuts

Or more reaslistically some kind of odd infection, virus, allergen that people there were exposed to by chance.

[amyk]

kreosan on YouTube has made a "microwave weapon" before and shown what it does. The symptoms of the people in the embassies don't match up. If it was a microwave I'd expect intense heat and burns too.

[coppercone2]

The number one thing is motive. Why would you use a secret weapon on a embassy? Russia is sparse with using weird weapons, maybe to assassinate dangerous spy-leakers and stuff.. but to terrorize a building?

[0xdeadbeef]

Maybe they are mixing up microwaves with (ultra-)sonic waves. For most people a wave is a wave
Still, this whole story doesn't make a lot of sense anyway. It's like a thousand times more likely that they got some kind of infection in their hotel/apartment house or it's a psychosomatic thing.

[coppercone2]

Yes, and also I think the only plausible motive, if this was real, is to make some kind of mass causality incident to decrease suspicion of use on a target of interest that was a victim in a different case, in order to derail or hamper an investigation, which is unlikely. So the investigators think that because this same symptoms occurred in mass in a area where such activity can have no motive, to weaken their belief in the investigation.

Maybe contaminated drug use? I heard spies and people in cuba in general like to partayyyy
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0376136/

[0xdeadbeef]

While I don't think that the described symptoms can really be explained by this, at least this is a somewhat interesting theory about what could have (theoretically) caused the noises:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/how-we-reverse-engineered-the-cuban-sonic-weapon-attack

Even if highly (!) unlikely, this would at least explain weird noises in the apartments of embassy employees (well, the common theory about what caused the noises is crickets btw.). And admittedly, while hearing weird noises in your apartment most certainly won't cause brain damage (which however also wasn't really found in any of the cases AFAIK) it sure can drive you nuts. In combination with stories about other events like this, it might cause some kind of psychosomatic disease with actual symptoms.

[djacobow]

One thing that I found interesting from the article is the existence of the Frey Effect.

Over the years, in the capacity of sage electrical engineer, I have counseled many near-hysterical people that the dangers of EM radiations were overstated, and in particular, that in the case of non-ionizing radiation, nobody could even come up with a mechanism by which an EM signal could interact with the brain, apart from heating -- which is not going to be a factor unless the source is high power or very close or both.

I was surprised to hear that you can induce auditory hallucinations with microwaves. Still, the article has no info on power levels, frequency, etc.  But if you can create auditory hallucinations, it's not a long leap to nausea.

As for motive, yeah, I dunno. I think it's interesting that the Cuba incident happened at a time of general thawing of US/Cuba relations, so one would not expect the Cuban gov't to be behind this. Maybe some hard-liners. The China thing is harder to explain.

[coppercone2]

I tried to frey myself but I could never figure it out (up to 20W at microwave with a horn)

never did do much more then try to play music as AM through it though.

Did not experiment with it much because I was afraid of my eyes being exposed, so I only did very short bursts but electrically and acoustically long.

Either you need fancy modulation or crazy power. But you figure, with people doing experiments with magnetrons, someone would notice.

[Kleinstein]

A microwave weapon is not really practical: due to the rather large wavelength, there is no such thing like a really focused beam, unless one uses a huge antenna. The usual 70 cm satellite dishes have an opening angle in the 3 degree range at 12 GHz. Something like a 5 m dish is difficult to hide and handle.

For the sicknesses, chances are high it's some chemical or biological thing, like contaminated/spoiled food or a virus. Even just the fear caused by rumors could cause psychological problems up to a self fulfilling fear.

[David Hess]

Considering how easy it would have been for the US to have a technical person make measurements and track down any ultrasonic, RF, or microwave attack, I am dubious about the whole thing.  There should be a whole lot more evidence.

[djacobow]

I tried to frey myself but I could never figure it out (up to 20W at microwave with a horn)

One must be careful not to fry oneself while Freying oneself. :-)

[djacobow]

Considering how easy it would have been for the US to have a technical person make measurements and track down any ultrasonic, RF, or microwave attack, I am dubious about the whole thing.  There should be a whole lot more evidence.

Though I find it hard to believe that an embassy would not have some kind of "signals/Tempest" person on staff who would be All. Over. This., it is getting harder to be surprised by incompetence in the US gov't. Also, the attack could be intermittent, and directed away from where any fixed sensors or antennas are known to be. For example, if the guys in "the van" know when the RF guy gets in in the morning, or goes out to get coffee, etc, or if the embassy staff are being attacked while at home or out and about, it could be reasonably easy to avoid detection. The obvious countermeasure for this would be for the staffers to wear some kind of RF/ultrasonic-detecting device on their person, like a radiation film badge.

All that said, you're probably right.

[chris_leyson]

Frey's 1st paper linked in the New York Times article, quotes the average power density for the "threshold of hearing" in eight subjects at two frequencies, 400uW/cm² at 1.31GHz and 2mW/cm² at 2.982GHz. Just to put things into perspective the IRPA limit for a microwave oven is 1mW/cm² measured at 2.5cm I think, I can't remember the exact figures. Anyway 1mW/cm² is 10W/m² is not really that high in terms of power density, it won't cause tissue heating so it's not going to literally going to "fry your brain".
From a microwave point of view I think it's plausable.

@djacobow Thanks for the posting the NYT article. It makes a pleasent change to see a well researched article. I wasn't aware of the "Frey effect" on the auditory sytem but after reading Allen H Frey's paper I think it's more likely to be microwave evesdropping and the modulation scheme used produces audible intermod products. I'm surprised that Uncle Sam didn't make any effort in detecting the so called weapons.

[coppercone2]

How do you do it? Like what modulation scheme? AM does not seem to work. I can try it right now with up to 10W from 0.5-18Ghz.

I did non-up-against-my-head experiments with microwave AM modulated by music from a MP3 player before just messing around, I never heard nothing. Tried like depache mode iirc. I honestly thought the frey effect was bullshit.

you wuold figure there would be frey headphones or something if it was real. They have bone conduction.

[jmelson]

I was surprised to hear that you can induce auditory hallucinations with microwaves. Still, the article has no info on power levels, frequency, etc.  But if you can create auditory hallucinations, it's not a long leap to nausea.

Well, talk to anyone who has had an MRI done, especially of the head/neck area.  They now run insane amounts of RF power to wobble the Hydrogen atoms, like 13 KW pulsed.  Also, they run strong AC magnetic fields to introduce the magnetic gradient.  The gradient coils make clunking/chattering noises, but the patient hears all sorts of higher frequency noise from the RF.

Jon

[chris_leyson]

@coppercone2 Maybe your head is too thick

I did non-up-against-my-head experiments with microwave AM modulated by music

Tried like depache mode iirc.

Thankyou for your scientific insight.

[radar_macgyver]

I call BS. In my experience, as soon as people know that something emits microwave RADIATION, they start running scared. Case in point: we completed installation of a new radar antenna under a dome on a tower. Dome is visible for several miles around. Due to long lead time on waveguide, we couldn't hook up the transmitter to the antenna for several weeks. Sure enough, in that time, we got at least two complaints from people living nearby that their WiFi stopped working and that their satellite TV stopped working.

For a while after I started working at my current job, I could swear I 'heard the radar PRF' while eating lunch, about 100 meters away from an S-band antenna with a 1 MW transmitter attached. It turned out one of the techs had a police scanner set up at his desk, with the squelch turned on. When the radar scanned across the building, enough signal broke through the squelch that I could hear it down the hall. Felt quite silly when I found out.

Years later, in the same lunch room, I thought I heard weird high pitched sounds that were very difficult to localize. After much effort and help from a colleague, we tracked the noise to a Wifi router. It was a dried out cap in a switch mode supply that caused the coils to vibrate. Swapped out the cap and the noise went away.

Yes yes, anecdotes are not evidence, but I'm willing to bet there's a more benign explanation for all this.

[coppercone2]

@coppercone2 Maybe your head is too thick

I did non-up-against-my-head experiments with microwave AM modulated by music

Tried like depache mode iirc.

Thankyou for your scientific insight.

how would you do the experiment?

In a MRI I had no idea if its the machine buzzing mechanically or induced.

You could make really cool headphones if it worked.

[jmelson]

I'm surprised that Uncle Sam didn't make any effort in detecting the so called weapons.

Oh, you can BE SURE that they did!  I know nothing, but even in friendly countries they have communications security people who are constantly checking for unexpected RF emissions.  Most of the time it would be either authorized devices that are malfunctioning or unauthorized devices that have been brought into the building.  But, this would also pick up signals from outside that are coming in.  I do know that the US government had portable RF scanning kits in a suitcase in 1968, I'm sure what they have now is WAY better.  One of the problems with this sort of thing is even if you know a problematic signal is coming in, it can be really hard to tell where it is coming FROM, especially if the creator is turning it on an off and moving the source around.

Once detected, they have to figure out who is doing it, WHY they are doing it, and what to do about it.  A lot of this stuff is kept under wraps, we go and complain to the corresponding agency and say "We KNOW what you are doing at location X, and if you don't cut it out, we are going to make things REALLY difficult for you at location Y."  The Russians had at least two hilltops site in the US where they were intercepting all sorts of important communications, and they were forced to vacate those locations.  This MIGHT have been the retaliation for the "sonic" thing, but I don't recall the exact timing of all this.

Jon

[Bud]

I'm surprised that Uncle Sam didn't make any effort in detecting the so called weapons.

Makes you think who was the source of the whole thing.

[David Hess]

Considering how easy it would have been for the US to have a technical person make measurements and track down any ultrasonic, RF, or microwave attack, I am dubious about the whole thing.  There should be a whole lot more evidence.

Though I find it hard to believe that an embassy would not have some kind of "signals/Tempest" person on staff who would be All. Over. This., it is getting harder to be surprised by incompetence in the US gov't.

It does not surprise me at all.  The US government is incredibly cheap when rent seeking is not involved and doubly so about protecting employees.  I would not say incompetence so much as dysfunctional.  Dysfunctionally incompetent?

That the whole set of incidents were not thoroughly and objectively investigated is damning.  There should have been a positive result one way or another.

Also, the attack could be intermittent, and directed away from where any fixed sensors or antennas are known to be. For example, if the guys in "the van" know when the RF guy gets in in the morning, or goes out to get coffee, etc, or if the embassy staff are being attacked while at home or out and about, it could be reasonably easy to avoid detection. The obvious countermeasure for this would be for the staffers to wear some kind of RF/ultrasonic-detecting device on their person, like a radiation film badge.

RF at these frequencies bounces very well and the intensity was plenty high so directing it away from possible warning receivers is not practical.  It was the level where even untuned detectors are sensitive enough but they are not useful in a complex RF environment unless you are close to the source.

Send a tech to the affected embassy to setup a remote network addressable spectrum analyser.  You could buy the hardware off the shelf in a couple days for 10s of thousands of dollars although interestingly enough, such hardware is crippled by the federal government's ITAR rules unless you get an exemption.  An electronic warfare receiver might be better but I don't know about pricing and availability on them.  This would not reveal the source but it would definitely show something fishy is going on.

Something else would be needed to test for ultrasound.  You might have to have something made.

[coppercone2]

rofl I bet you it was a carbon monoxide lead on a shitty cuban boiler, maybe too many people smoking cigars outside the air vent

no one is going to attack a US embassy to give them brain damage, especially on their back yard, Why would putin start a war between cuba and usa? How did cuba afford such technology? they cant even pave their roads.

Embassy attacks happen in the middle east and in Africa, because of religious extremists.

Can someone give me a modulation scheme and power level and frequency required to induce these frey effects so I can try to put the microwave part of this issue to rest if its under 20W and 18GHz?

I can't do anything about the ultrasonics but this honestly kinda sounds like it belongs on infowars.com. ALl these articles are coming up with insane plots with no freaking motive behind them. Russia bribed their way through Cuban officials or Cuban organized crime that runs the imports and outports to smuggle in some kind of high end psychotronic weapon taken out of "red alert 2 yuri's revenge" 50's anti commie pulp, despite the fact that the USA strictly watches the imports to Cuba to determine if you know, someone is trying to put nukes there again, then figure out how to hide or exfiltrate this machine after it causes a media debacle?

If this thing was outside the embassy in a van, the power level should be low, even if it was some whizzbang dish or phased array housed in a non suspicious van (yea right, like vans in front of embassy won't get investigated by the friendly CIA security detail that probably lives in an apartment across the street). These guys are not exactly old ladies which are scared to go outside. You put any large vehical outside an embassy now a days and people start to think its a jihadist with a car bomb. I bet you there is a 50% chance some 'kid' with a boroscope and a skate board is going to probe a van parked outside the CUBAN embassy at night.

[coppercone2]

I don't think it's sonic. It would be very hard to penetrate walls with high frequency, and it would be felt as vibration with low frequency.
Microwave is certainly possible, but may not in China. Most Chinese buildings are made of concrete-rebar structure, and it would be hard to target anyone who's not directly facing a window.
Also, US and China are known for the ongoing spying war from embassies and consulates of each side. It would be stupid not to radio-enforce the buildings.

Unless its a side effect from a espionage device, why would you attack a embassy in the first place? If anything they will just move it to a even more secure location thats more difficult to spy on. They probably spend all this time making local connections in the area so the embassy can be spied on, housing their counterintelligence near by, digging tunnels, etc. You know cuba and china can just tell them to get the fuck out of their country if they wanted to? Or zone that area for some kind of public works that important like some air purifier, water treatment, power station that HAS to be there for the city to function and tell them yea sorry

[coppercone2]

I don't think it's sonic. It would be very hard to penetrate walls with high frequency, and it would be felt as vibration with low frequency.
Microwave is certainly possible, but may not in China. Most Chinese buildings are made of concrete-rebar structure, and it would be hard to target anyone who's not directly facing a window.
Also, US and China are known for the ongoing spying war from embassies and consulates of each side. It would be stupid not to radio-enforce the buildings.

They would need to fly a drone and attach it to a window or something, if you did it from across the street or a roof top it would be attenuated or freaking demolish everything with seismic waves.

Maybe some kind of vortex cannon could do something like bang on the embassy walls and make people think fidel castro's ghost is banging on the windows. That could explain some symptoms if they use some kinda combustion engine to modulate it, since it would be carbon monoxide there that can poison them if it has open windows or something.


I can conceive trying to send audio this way
Maybe they should investigate the guy making the video, its about at a Cuban technology level, perhaps he did the engineering

If you know someone is a spy and is really being a trouble maker why not just hire some local hoods to stab him ? The article implies they know the identities of the agents, so that means a mugging, beating, stabbing, shooting, poisoning, car accident, fire, drug bust, etc can easily be arranged.