[Peace-discuss] NYT: Is ‘Havana Syndrome’ an ‘Act of War’ or ‘Mass Hysteria’?

[Robert Naiman]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/opinion/havana-syndrome-disorder.html

A thorough takedown of "Havana Syndrome." Executive summary: Judy Miller,
Russia-Cuba version.

Note this in particular:

[...]

The case for skepticism

Despite the lack of conclusive evidence that U.S. officials were victims of
“targeted attacks,” much less of secret microwave weapons deployed by a
foreign power, many intelligence officials and journalists seem
increasingly convinced of the narrative. The latest big story
<https://puck.news/havana-syndrome-in-bidens-washington/?utm_code=julia%40puck.news>
 on the “Havana syndrome,” published in the media outlet Puck News, led
with the following admission from the author, the national security
reporter Julia Ioffe: “I always suspected that these illnesses were the
product of deliberate attacks and that the Russian government was behind
them — it was exactly the kind of weird thing they’d be both into and
capable of.”

Americans should be wary of how the “Havana syndrome” is being framed in
this way as a warrant for retaliatory action, Natalie Shure argues
<https://newrepublic.com/article/164088/havana-syndrome-colin-powell-war> in
The New Republic.

   -

   In May, she notes, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller
   referred
   <https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/03/acting-pentagon-chief-miller-attacks-485236>
    to the “Havana syndrome” as an “act of war.”
   -

   More recently, the House Foreign Affairs Committee has reportedly begun
   marking up <https://twitter.com/aidachavez/status/1450562819632549894> a
   bill calling for sanctions against whoever “directed or carried out the
   Havana Syndrome attacks.”
   -

   This month, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida accused skeptics of the
   targeted microwave attack theory like Baloh of being “influence agents
   <https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/08/us-investigators-increasingly-confident-directed-energy-attacks-behind-havana-syndrome-515693>”
   paid by foreign powers.

   [...]

   Perhaps most shocking, in Shure’s view, an anonymous member of the
   intelligence community quoted in Ioffe’s story seemed to call for punishing
   the alleged culprits, alluding to intelligence of “medium confidence” that
   the alleged culprits were Russian.

   “Of course, we also invaded Iraq with ‘medium confidence,’” Shure
   writes. “If ‘Havana syndrome’ has mercifully yet to be used to agitate for
   war as concretely as the imaginary nukes of Iraq were, it’s clearly been
   seized on by a national security apparatus formidably expanded since 9/11 —
   and if more people don’t come to their senses, harm will surely result.”
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