Sickening noises

In December 2016, a CIA officer checked in to the American Embassy’s health office in
Havana claiming he was suffering from nausea, headache, and dizziness. Days later,
two more CIA officers reported similar ailments. By late 2018, the number grew to 26
Americans and 13 Canadians experiencing nausea, hearing loss, vertigo, nosebleeds,
and focusing issues. In all the cases, victims claimed that the symptoms were
triggered by a strange noise they’d heard at their homes or hotel rooms. One person
said the noise was high-pitched. Another described “a beam of sound, pointed into
their rooms.” Some insisted that the noise more closely resembled marbles rolling
along the floor.
The illnesses confounded medical experts. Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania
who examined some of the victims diagnosed concussion-like symptoms but found
no signs they’d suffered concussions.

We know what you must be thinking: The Cuban government is up to something,

right? The Cubans vehemently deny they’re responsible, and many American
investigators believe them. That’s because they still don’t know who or what made the
victims sick. Was it a new type of weapon? The CIA claims it doesn’t know of any
weaponry that could cause these symptoms. What about an ultrasound? One theory
holds that a pair of covert eavesdropping devices placed too close to each other by
Cuban agents may have inadvertently produced such a reaction, like the kind of
feedback you hear when someone stands too close to a microphone. But the FBI has
found no evidence to substantiate that argument. In fact, an ultrasound is above the
range of human hearing.

Recordings of the sounds from some of the victims only added to the confusion of
some medical experts. Two scientists who studied the recordings believe they
captured the sound of lovelorn male crickets. One of the scientists, Alex­ander Stubbs
of the University of California, Berkeley, says the insects are incredibly loud. “You can
hear them from inside a diesel truck going 40 miles an hour on the highway.” Still, the
scientists had no idea why the sounds might lead to illness in humans.

Maybe it was just nerves. “Cuba is a high-threat, high-stress post,” a former embassy
official told propublica.org. Diplomats are warned that “there will be surveillance.
There will be listening devices in your house, probably in your car and for some
people, that puts them in a high-stress mentality, in a threat-anticipation mode.”
But then how do we explain what happened in China? In May 2018, an American
posted in the consulate in Guangzhou was diagnosed with the very same mystery
illness and immediately after that, 15 Americans were evacuated and brought back to
their home countries.

While the seemingly airborne cause of these brain injuries is still a mystery, the fallout
is clear. The Americans removed 60 percent of their diplomats from Cuba and
expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from Washington, DC. There’s still many things to
discover regarding this weird illness, however, one thing is true, these mysterious
sounds may well be the opening shots in a new kind of cold war.

Dinis Pereira n°7 10°5a