Hacker News Reader

Comment by declan_roberts | Hacker News Reader

This story is unbelievable to me. It leaves way too many unexplained conclusions.

Russia wants to kill US diplomats (why? All of them? Some of them? One of them?) so rather than doing some botched robbery or fake suicide... they invent a "direct energy weapon" to kill them?

Or maybe they're researching this cool new direct energy weapon and they decide to test it out on... US diplomats? You'd think they could pick a less conspicuous target to test out their assassination laser beams.

Definitely withholding judgement until we learn more.

View on HN

Who says Russia wants to kill them? Maybe it just wants to render them ineffective. That has been achieved ("Others have suffered such severe long-term cognitive and vestibular aftereffects that they can no longer function on a day-to-day basis and have been medically retired from government service.").

I think it's sensible to suspend judgment for now, but this is clearly one of the two main plausible contenders for an explanation of the observed phenomena.

The aim seems not to kill, but to severely damage. The article makes a point that American diplomats feel betrayed that noone takes the attacks seriously, and are intimidated to work on Russian affairs.

Russia has a long record of feeling it is at war with the west, especially the US, and trying to fuck with it where it can.

Russia has a long history of assassinating people, poisoning opposition, and generally playing dirty with regards to international affairs

I don't think this is unique in any way. The US has spent many hundreds of billions doing the same against non-Western interests.

60 minutes gave more details yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdPSD1SUYCY - good watch.

The tactics of Russian operatives have always been more nuanced than simply "eliminating the adversary". Typically, such extreme measures are reserved for traitors, like Sergei Skripal or the helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine.

In certain instances, they opt for psychological warfare techniques, similar to those employed by the Stasi in East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

Guess where Putin was stationed in the '80s during his tenure as a KGB officer?

I haven't read the article yet but I think sometimes its good to be loud and good to get caught because you're saying "we can get you" to the people the public don't know exist yet.

If you watch the 60 Minutes doc, it is literally taking out of service top people working against Russia.

Killing them would be crazy. This weapon, whatever it is, is perfect. Just enough doubt (by people like you and other Russian plants) to create no clear answer. EDIT: I'm not calling you a Russia shill.

The linked article and the 60 Minutes doc are literally what everyone's been waiting for. I was on the sidelines before, but not now.

> Definitely withholding judgement until we learn more.

This is a key point made in the article.

“A consensus has formed among the growing community of AHI sufferers that the U.S. government — and the CIA in particular — is hiding the full extent of what it knows about the source of Havana Syndrome. The victims offer two general hypotheses as to why. The first is that releasing the full intelligence around Russian involvement might be so shocking as to convince the American people and their representatives that Moscow has committed an act of war against the United States, thereby raising thorny questions as to how a nuclear power fond of showing off its hypersonic missiles ought to be made to pay. The second is that acknowledging Havana Syndrome is caused by a foreign adversary could put a damper on recruitment to the CIA and State Department.”

This misses a third key point. The US government has a complicated relationship with Russia. The Republican Party in particular.

> The US government has a complicated relationship with Russia. The Republican Party in particular.

not really that complicated: $$$$$

because corporations are people, and can donate. that means foreign corporations.

...and also the NRA. what was that little red-headed Russian lady's name again?

Maria Butina. Isn't she in the Duma now?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com