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Episode 30: When Microwaves Continue to Attack
7 Plays3 years ago
An update on Episode 4, where we first discussed the phenomenon of the "Frey Effect" in which sounds are heard as a result of pulsed microwave radiation. The Frey Effect was proposed to be involved in attacks on the US embassy in Cuba. Could this also be going on in the US embassy in China? Rolf and Joe discuss further, and give a call out for any expertise that could be added.
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Transcript
Intro to Microwave Attacks
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome to Cognation. I'm Joe Hardy. And I'm Ross Nelson. On this episode, we're going to discuss microwaves and the possibility of using microwaves in attacks and how cognitive science might have a role in understanding what is or is not happening in these microwave attacks.
00:00:32
Speaker
In episode four, we talked about something called the Frey effect. And recently there's been an update on this story. So the New York Times posted a new story on attacks that are happening in China now. So originally the story was about Cuba.
00:00:50
Speaker
And people were reporting things like headaches, dizziness, and they also reported hearing some strange sounds that didn't seem to go away when they covered their ears or changed when they moved to another position in the room.
The Frey Effect: Auditory Experiences?
00:01:06
Speaker
So there was a proposal that these sounds came from microwaves directed at their heads through a process called the Frei effect, which essentially, again, and we discussed this before, which essentially
00:01:21
Speaker
causes your brain to jiggle in sync with the microwaves and sends this along to your auditory nerve, to the cochlea, and you hear a high-pitched sound, even though it's electromagnetic energy and not actual physical sound pressures like you would normally hear.
Skepticism and Symptoms of Embassy Staff
00:01:40
Speaker
Right. So instead of having sound waves propagated through the air, as normally happens in sound, this is like essentially your brain
00:01:50
Speaker
the inside of your head being cooked a little bit. Just a little. Just a little bit. And the vibration from that cooking essentially causing you to have acoustic experiences so you can hear things. And so that reference to being able to hear sounds
00:02:11
Speaker
in response to pulsed microwave radiation is the fray effect, per se. And some of these other health effects, these putative health effects, are thought to be perhaps related to these microwave transmissions, although that is disputed.
00:02:34
Speaker
So in our in our episode four, when we talked about this first, I think, Joe, you are a lot more skeptical about the idea that microwaves were the cause of this. Right. I mean, we had done some research and we actually spoke with Professor Galome, who is a medical doctor and professor who has written about this. And her basic point was that the
00:03:02
Speaker
symptoms that were occurring in the people coming from the Cuban embassy, both Americans and Canadians who were suffering from from a bunch of different symptoms that seemed consistent with what might be happening in a microwave type attack.
Theories: Microwave Attacks or Psychogenic Responses?
00:03:22
Speaker
So things like headaches, the sounds that we talked about, hearing sounds that are either high pitched whine or grinding sound.
00:03:30
Speaker
And also fatigue, some other symptoms included nose bleeds, a variety of different fairly common symptoms. Somewhat non-specific symptoms too. So maybe harder to figure out the origins of them. Yeah, so there basically comes down to two predominant theories here.
00:03:59
Speaker
Why is it that so many people working at this American embassy in Cuba and then also similarly diplomats in China at the same time period, this is really 2018 is when most of this was happening. Why would there be so many people? It was like 25 people I think in Cuba and maybe 15 in China on that order of magnitude reporting symptoms like this.
Historical Context and Conspiracy Theories
00:04:26
Speaker
One explanation is that there's some sort of
00:04:30
Speaker
attack or other something that's happening to them.
00:04:35
Speaker
And the microwave attack is the number one hypothesis. Or it's that there is some sort of psychogenic response. In other words, people are reacting because they're in a stressful environment and other people are having these symptoms and they're reporting these symptoms. And so others sort of pick up on that and then have similar symptoms. So those are sort of the two main competing hypotheses. Is there some sort of an attack?
00:05:03
Speaker
or it's psychogenic and people aren't experiencing this. It's caused from the inside out rather than the outside in.
00:05:14
Speaker
And yeah, so I mean, my originally, I was very, very skeptical about it. And, you know, it's still difficult to say that whether this is like a microwave attack per se, but as we look more into it, there's definitely quite a bit there there. So it's worth thinking about a bit more and discussing a bit more, I think.
Microwaves in Communication
00:05:36
Speaker
So essentially, this is us unfolding our weird conspiracy theories about this, although it's not really that conspiratorial. And I think there are some good reasons once you put things together to suspect that this could be the case. And I think probably the biggest reason to suspect it is that it seems to have happened before in the embassy in Moscow.
00:06:02
Speaker
Right. That's right. Yeah. There were reports from the 60s and 70s that the US embassy in Moscow was being bombarded by microwave radiation.
00:06:19
Speaker
And I think it's important to understand that, and this is something that we're, that we're also learning kind of as we're going through this, uh, that microwaves are just, you know, just microwaves per se just refer to a specific band of electromagnetic radiation. So, uh, electromagnetic radiation over a certain frequency range, essentially. Um, so it's not just this, you know, the stuff that is in your, your microwave oven. Right.
00:06:49
Speaker
But it's electromagnetic radiation, and it's used in point-to-point communications. So a variety of different types of systems might use microwaves. So things like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc., could use microwave radiation.
00:07:06
Speaker
So it's commonly used in point-to-point communication at low frequencies, I mean at low energy. I mean, to me, that seems like it could be used, I mean, it could be, their intent is to interfere with existing communications.
00:07:23
Speaker
Right, and so we look back at this article from 1979, in the New York Times, where they describe that Russia agreed to stop bombarding the US embassy with microwave radiation because they wanted to improve relations ahead of a high-level meeting, basically.
00:07:49
Speaker
So in this case it was barely even a secret because the embassy, the people at the embassy were well aware that they were constantly being bombarded by some signal and they knew that there was a signal both from
00:08:08
Speaker
What was it, from the north and the south? There were two separate signals that they could distinguish and they were on what, a couple hours a day? So they were kind of always there in the background and the embassy people knew all about it. And at one point they even were directed to install shielding to block any radiation from coming in.
00:08:32
Speaker
Right. Right. Yeah. So this was this was, you know, by all reports, an actual thing that was happening. You know, there were detectors that the U.S. used that they could identify that these signals were being projected in the direction of the U.S. embassy and that they were, in fact, you know, in the penetrating the embassy. And there are different hypotheses. I don't think anyone, you know, no one in the reporting that we were looking at
00:09:03
Speaker
clearly knew why they were doing it. There was a couple hypotheses. One might be that
00:09:10
Speaker
you know, they were somehow interfering with communication systems or activating communication systems, you know, maybe there's some sort of recording device. Just causing general chaos with all communications. Yeah, just somehow some spy stuff, right, that they were doing. Yeah. And another possibility was that they were actually trying to harm people in the embassy, causing psychological distress or, you know, physical distress in some capacity.
00:09:38
Speaker
And so, yeah, so the, and this was something that was apparently going on for many years. Yeah. Many years in the Soviet union at the U S embassy. And so that, that history is a little bit where this theory, which, I mean, I mean, it is a conspiracy theory, but I mean, it may, you know, it has elements
Havana Syndrome: Medical Mystery or Diplomatic Issue?
00:09:59
Speaker
of truth to it. It may actually be true. We don't know. Um, but.
00:10:05
Speaker
That's sort of the basis of where this comes from. That's sort of the historical fact that people point to where this is coming from. And so when you look at the symptoms, I mean, the symptoms are quite similar too. They're listed, I mean, it's these nonspecific oxidative stress type symptoms.
00:10:25
Speaker
headaches, inability to concentrate, they say the same exact thing in these attacks from the 60s and 70s. So that's where the similarity really starts to, you know, it seems pretty familiar.
00:10:37
Speaker
Right, right, exactly, exactly. And we talk about this more, and Dr. Gollom goes into it in some detail in our February 12th, 2019 episodes. There are two episodes. There are essentially 4A and 4B. One's called the fray effect or one microwaves attack, and the other is called fray effect continued, Dr. Beatrice Gollom. And yeah, so if you're interested in more of the details of all the symptoms that people are reporting, you can go back and look at that.
00:11:06
Speaker
Also, there's a number of articles in the New York Times about this from the spring and summer of 2018. If you want to refresh on some of this stuff, go back and listen to the episode. Sorry, go ahead.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, not at all. Yeah, and then, you know, this has even got a name. Now, the Havana syndrome is what it's being called due to the effects that people had in Cuba. And now, I mean,
00:11:40
Speaker
And I believe it was the New Yorker article. It's called The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome from November 19th in 2018. I think that might be where the name comes from from that article. But in any case, it now has a moniker associated with it, The Havana Syndrome. And so it's enough of a thing that it's got a name and all that kind of stuff. And also, I mean, the other thing to note is that this has had real or imagined
00:12:10
Speaker
This has absolutely had real consequences. I mean, whether the effect is real or imagined, the phenomenon has had real international diplomatic impact because the US actually pulled most of its diplomats from Cuba nominally over this attack.
00:12:36
Speaker
That was in 2018. And a different situation happens in China because I guess it's easier to condemn Cuba and say something to them than it is to sort of issue a broad statement against China. So the United States did not respond as aggressively. Right. That's what the most recent New York Times article is about, is that there is this kerfuffle around
00:13:06
Speaker
a difference in the way that diplomats who are reporting these symptoms coming from China are being treated versus the diplomats in Cuba and how they were being treated.
00:13:18
Speaker
and the speculation is that the difference is due to the different diplomatic relationships vis-a-vis Cuba and China, where the administration didn't want to upset China ahead of some trade talks and they were excited to cause, to have something to complain about
00:13:47
Speaker
with regards to Cuba. So there was a difference there. And so diplomats from China are saying that they should receive the same benefits, including disability benefits and medical treatment. Yeah, that's the tricky thing with this when it's playing out in this diplomatic field that
00:14:05
Speaker
It becomes a political issue, so it becomes a little harder to figure out exactly what's going on. Because in the Moscow situation, it's a secret that everybody knows about, right? It's right out there in the open. They're clearly bombarding them with microwave radiation, and they know all about it.
00:14:31
Speaker
in their response. This would only happen probably in a diplomatic kind of situation where you have to, there are other kinds of consequences. Instead of saying, hey, stop, we know you're shooting microwaves at us, stop that. You just have to treat it in some sort of more subtle way, which is just bizarre. It is. And basically, it seems that
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah, so this character who is the feature in the New York Times article from October
Challenges in Detection and Confirmation
00:15:05
Speaker
of this year, October 19th, U.S. diplomats and spies battle Trump administration over suspected attacks is the name of the article. And the character's name is Mark Lenzi. And it says here, Mark Lenzi and his wife had lightheadedness, sleep issues and headaches, and their children were waking up with bloody noses.
00:15:26
Speaker
symptoms they thought might be from smog in Guangzhou, China where Mr. Lenzi worked for the State Department.
00:15:33
Speaker
but air pollution could not explain his sudden memory loss, including forgetting names of work tools. So Mr. Lenzi goes on to describe a bit about what he believes happened to him in China and others as well. So others who were working in China had similar symptoms that seem like,
00:16:03
Speaker
maybe the same kinds of symptoms that diplomats in Cuba had. And the US has said that essentially these people in Cuba were experiencing some kind of an attack and that's why they were withdrawn. Whereas in China, they're basically saying, no, it's a different situation. And interestingly, Mike Pompeo figures into this as being at the time ahead of CIA
00:16:34
Speaker
saying that one of these cases, at least in China, looks a lot like what was happening in Cuba. And then later kind of walked that back. So. Yeah, so they have to, so they have to, it does sound like there's something that isn't being conveyed clearly, right? Right. Right. And then, you know, in this China situation, again, there was someone who reported
00:17:01
Speaker
having detected microwave radiation using some sort of a detector device. And then the US government followed up. But according to this report, there's at least some speculation that the equipment they were using to test was intentionally
00:17:19
Speaker
not the highest quality or caliber testing device. That's where the conspiracy part comes in. That's like the coverup stuff. The coverup stuff, right, exactly. So that's the speculation is that they didn't want to find the microwave radiation, so they didn't.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, see, this is my biggest question about the whole thing. And this is what I guess I've been thinking about the story is, OK, it's microwave radiation, which is pretty common and easily detectable and also in the same frequency range as, you know, lots of other stuff going around Bluetooth and and cell phone signals.
00:18:01
Speaker
Why wasn't this triangulated as soon as there was any suspicion of this happening? Why isn't it that there's detection going on more so that they can locate where the signal is coming from and confirm what's going on? Now maybe that actually happened and maybe the embassy did that but just didn't report it. And maybe it's something that
00:18:27
Speaker
Right. And that's why, yeah, exactly. And that's sort of what we were talking about before the show was maybe we should, you know, issue like a FOIA kind of inquiry and see if we can find out some more information here. But we owe it to our listeners. Don't we owe it to our listeners and ourselves, frankly, to ourselves dig into this a little bit more because, you know, we're curious now and, uh,
00:18:53
Speaker
You know, you make, I mean, you make a good point. The, you know, in the sixties and seventies, yeah, there were detectors at the U S embassy in the Soviet union in Moscow.
Scientific Explanations for Reported Symptoms
00:19:08
Speaker
So the technology is old and technology is much better technology and probably much cheaper technology to, to detect these signals.
00:19:17
Speaker
Right. I mean, what I want to understand a little bit better is what is the state of the art with these types of weapons? What is possible? How much energy, how much power can you actually produce at what distances? Because microwaves are a line of sight communication. So it would need to be some sort of a beam pointed directly at where it was intended to have its effect.
00:19:45
Speaker
Well, here's the thing. We were really interested in the fray effect and understanding how the fray effect works. So understanding how these microwaves are causing one of the symptoms that they're hearing this kind of noise. But it seems quite possible that there's a lot wider range of frequencies that are being bombarded so that the fray effect is just sort of one accidental effect that may have happened to a few individuals because they happen to get some spillover of this.
00:20:15
Speaker
One thing we know is that microwave radiation itself doesn't cause these kinds of symptoms like a bloody nose, or at least that doesn't seem likely, that bloody noses or serious brain damage would occur from microwave radiation.
00:20:34
Speaker
At low power, we know that microwave radiation does not cause... Sure. If you stuck your head in the microwave and turned it on, of course. Right, right, right. So that's what we're really saying. It's like, what would the characteristics of this signal need to be like to cause this? I think what we have come to is that microwave radiation essentially, it can interact with your
00:21:01
Speaker
body in your brain, but essentially what it does is it vibrates larger objects and causes them to heat up. But it doesn't target individual neural pathways or individual cells for damage. It's not ionizing radiation. So it's not like UV light, which would start to break down specific molecules or DNA or something like that.
00:21:30
Speaker
So it doesn't have impact at that level, although vibration and heat both, I mean, the vibration itself is the thing that nominally is causing the sound experience or the experience of acoustic inputs just by the vibration of the inner ear itself. And so you can imagine that having all kinds of consequences
00:21:54
Speaker
And that's part of what they're saying. I mean, the interesting thing here from the medical side, you've got Dr. Cologne, but you've also got doctors at University of Pennsylvania, where a number of these patients were treated, saying that these are brain damage symptoms. Because you're seeing actual, when you're doing scans, you see some white matter damage.
00:22:22
Speaker
That's right. And I think they're also having some clinical assessments that they believe are consistent with, um, you know, brain damage essentially. So yeah, interesting. It might be interesting to see if we could reach out to, um, to some of those folks and if they would be interested in talking at all. Yeah. More about it. Yeah. But I mean, there's, uh, there's a lot, there's a lot more.
00:22:47
Speaker
here to understand. I mean, if it's not, I mean, there are a lot of people who are experiencing symptoms that are consistent with brain damage.
Future Investigations and Experiments
00:23:02
Speaker
I mean, brain damage is kind of like a loaded term, but what's a better way to say that? I mean, there are
00:23:07
Speaker
they're having, they're experiencing these health symptoms that are consistent with some sort of changes in their brains. And why would they all be experiencing that if it were not for some sort of coordinated something, whether it's like a disease or whether there's no diseases detected or some sort of an attack?
00:23:31
Speaker
It could be, you know, could be psychogenic. We know that that's a possibility, but then it doesn't explain the physiological effects. So I think going forward, some things to get more understanding of is like, what are, what is the evidence of physiological changes in the brains of these people?
00:23:48
Speaker
What is known about what kinds of detection systems have been used for microwaves and these cases? And then what is the state of the art of these types of weapons? What's possible here? What could be going on? Yes. And if the government's not going to do it, then I think we need to go to China and set something up and we can triangulate and find that weapon. Yes. But I think we're going to have to wait till COVID is over. Yeah.
00:24:17
Speaker
I'm not interested in going on a long plane ride right now. Yeah, I feel like it's maddening to think about this. We don't know what the answer is, but I feel like if there was someone curious enough at the time when this was happening, they could have easily have set up some detection system and figured out if there was a signal coming from somewhere and exactly where it was.
00:24:46
Speaker
it's possible somebody did that and has an idea of it. Right. I mean, isn't it, wouldn't it be the case that you wouldn't even necessarily have to be inside the building if, if you knew the direction, you know, right. Or you could get like a line of sight of from the outside, assuming that this, you know, whatever signal had to come from the outside of the building into the inside of the building, you get
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah. From the outside of the building, you could potentially put some sort of detector up there and see if there's something going on there. It might be hard to access Havana right now, but like Guangzhou, China, lots of Americans are there right now.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah, and in the one in Moscow, it was, I think it went for a couple hours a day. So, I mean, you'd notice something going up at some particular time of the day. I think all embassies from now on should be equipped with some sort of, I mean, they should have shielding and detection systems and all kinds of stuff. Right, no, and every diplum patch should be equipped with a tinfoil hat. Yes, a tinfoil hat.
00:25:51
Speaker
Everybody needs a tin foil helmet and that's the place to start for sure.
00:25:59
Speaker
Well, cool, I think we need to go back and find some more information and learn some more on this and we'll report back. But any other thoughts on the topic while we're on it? Oh, there's a lot to get into. One thing I have to do is I have to give a shout out to Jesse Sharpentier who brought this to my attention and got us re-interested in the fray effect and what's going on. I mean, this continuing mystery.
00:26:24
Speaker
Right. Right. And so my understanding is that you still have not implemented the fray effect in your lab. No, not yet. You're just putting together the microwave emitter that you're going to use to cook your brain to experience this yourself, right? I'm just hesitating on pressing the button. That's all. It's all hooked up. You've got the Arduino's all set up and you're ready to go. You just need to press the button.
00:26:54
Speaker
What do you think would be more dangerous than using direct current on your skull, which people use already? I think it's just the thing of, you'd want to have it built by somebody who knew what they were doing. I think it's almost certainly, there's a range of
00:27:16
Speaker
intensity of this, or you could experience some sound probably and not be permanently damaged from it. I mean, Alan Frey is still alive, right? And he's in his eighties. Yeah. Yes. He's still around. I know we should ask him what he thinks.
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah. Alan Frey, if you're listening to this, yes, we'd love to have you as a shout out. You know, you can, you can find us on Twitter at JL Hardy, PhD at nation cog.
Call for Expert Insights
00:27:44
Speaker
You can email us at cog nation podcast at gmail.com. That's cog nation podcast, all one word at gmail.com.
00:27:53
Speaker
Love to hear people's thoughts about the fray effect and these microwave attacks. And hopefully we'll have another episode about this, um, and continue to think about it. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're a physicist who knows, uh, something about microwaves and the possibility of like how a weapon like this could be constructed and what its characteristics would be, we'd love to have you on the show. And if you are a diplomat and have some specific information here, we'd love to talk to you about that as well. Yes. Thanks for listening.