The DNI withdrew its Havana Syndrome assessments for excluding contrary evidence. Weeks later, the Pentagon renamed the programme around directed-energy bio-effects.
I am slightly confused whilst reading this article as it is quite early in the morning and I just started reading this after being woken from my sleep. I don’t believe we should seek to blame Russia whenever something bad happens what I am baffled by is that directed energy weapons when deployed to cause harm or injure would not be detectable so how therefore do you go about investigating the causes for what these people had reported that does not detract from the fact that it should still have been investigated in the correct manner.
Thank you — and I think the distinction you’re drawing is an important one.
I absolutely agree that an investigation should not begin with the premise that Russia must be responsible. In fact, the article deliberately states that the public evidence does *not* currently establish Russia as the perpetrator, nor does it establish that every reported AHI was caused by directed energy.
On detection, though, I’d make one distinction: a directed-energy event is not necessarily undetectable. Pulsed RF energy is physically measurable, and military research into high-power microwave systems explicitly involves sensors capable of receiving and characterising transmitted signals. The much harder problem is retrospective detection. If a short-duration exposure occurs and nobody is monitoring the relevant frequencies, location and time when it happens, you cannot simply return weeks later and expect the signal still to be there.
That is why a proper investigation has to be much broader: contemporaneous RF monitoring where possible, immediate medical examination, identification of unusual injury patterns, geographical and temporal clustering of cases, intelligence about potentially relevant technologies and actors, examination of devices, witness evidence and comparison between independently reported incidents.
And this is precisely where the DNI’s June decision becomes so important.
The government did not merely say, “we have reconsidered the evidence.” It rescinded the previous assessments after finding, among other failures, that contrary intelligence had been excluded and intelligence collection itself had been restricted in a way that preserved an analytical position dependent upon the absence of evidence.
That is the central issue for me.
“We did not detect the weapon” can be perfectly legitimate evidence.
But “we did not detect it because we did not adequately collect the evidence that might have detected it” cannot safely be used to conclude that it did not exist.
That still doesn’t prove Russia did it. It doesn’t even prove directed energy caused every case.
It does mean the people reporting these incidents deserved a rigorous investigation capable of testing those possibilities rather than an analytical process that, according to the DNI’s own subsequent review, excluded contrary evidence and constrained collection.
I am slightly confused whilst reading this article as it is quite early in the morning and I just started reading this after being woken from my sleep. I don’t believe we should seek to blame Russia whenever something bad happens what I am baffled by is that directed energy weapons when deployed to cause harm or injure would not be detectable so how therefore do you go about investigating the causes for what these people had reported that does not detract from the fact that it should still have been investigated in the correct manner.
Thank you — and I think the distinction you’re drawing is an important one.
I absolutely agree that an investigation should not begin with the premise that Russia must be responsible. In fact, the article deliberately states that the public evidence does *not* currently establish Russia as the perpetrator, nor does it establish that every reported AHI was caused by directed energy.
On detection, though, I’d make one distinction: a directed-energy event is not necessarily undetectable. Pulsed RF energy is physically measurable, and military research into high-power microwave systems explicitly involves sensors capable of receiving and characterising transmitted signals. The much harder problem is retrospective detection. If a short-duration exposure occurs and nobody is monitoring the relevant frequencies, location and time when it happens, you cannot simply return weeks later and expect the signal still to be there.
That is why a proper investigation has to be much broader: contemporaneous RF monitoring where possible, immediate medical examination, identification of unusual injury patterns, geographical and temporal clustering of cases, intelligence about potentially relevant technologies and actors, examination of devices, witness evidence and comparison between independently reported incidents.
And this is precisely where the DNI’s June decision becomes so important.
The government did not merely say, “we have reconsidered the evidence.” It rescinded the previous assessments after finding, among other failures, that contrary intelligence had been excluded and intelligence collection itself had been restricted in a way that preserved an analytical position dependent upon the absence of evidence.
That is the central issue for me.
“We did not detect the weapon” can be perfectly legitimate evidence.
But “we did not detect it because we did not adequately collect the evidence that might have detected it” cannot safely be used to conclude that it did not exist.
That still doesn’t prove Russia did it. It doesn’t even prove directed energy caused every case.
It does mean the people reporting these incidents deserved a rigorous investigation capable of testing those possibilities rather than an analytical process that, according to the DNI’s own subsequent review, excluded contrary evidence and constrained collection.
Yes I agree, by detection I should have made it clear that I was referring to detection by means of medical examination of the person effected.