REPORTED 2017 – SOURCE: https://hackaday.com/2017/09/25/cuban-embassy-attacks-and-the-microwave-auditory-effect/

If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you may have seen a series of articles coming out about US staffers in Cuba. It seems that 21 staffers have suffered a bizarre array of injuries ranging from hearing loss to dizziness to concussion-like traumatic brain injuries. Some staffers have reported hearing incapacitating sounds in the embassy and in their hotel rooms. The reports range from clicking to grinding, humming, or even blaring sounds. One staffer described being awoken to a horrifically loud sound, only to have it disappear as soon as he moved away from his bed. When he got back into bed, the mysterious sound came back.

Cuba has denied any wrongdoing. However, the US has already started to take action – expelling two Cuban diplomats from the US in May. The question though is what exactly could have caused these injuries. The press has gone wild with theories of sonic weaponry, hidden bugs, and electronic devices, poisons, you name it. Even Julian Assange has weighed in, stating “The diversity of symptoms suggests that this is a pathogen combined with paranoia in an isolated diplomatic corps.”

So what’s going on? Bizarre accidents? Cloak and dagger gone awry? Mass hysteria among the US state department, or something else entirely. The most common theory passed around is some sort of auditory or sonic weapon. Acoustic (ultrasonic) non-lethal weapons like the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) are well known due to their use by law enforcement to disperse protests, or on oceangoing ships to deter pirates and environmentalists. LRAD devices emit an extremely loud focused beam of sound. Usually, the sound is a siren, though the system can be used as a giant megaphone as well. Anyone in the beam is motivated to get out of it.