Toward the end of the Obama administration and the beginning of the Trump regime, American diplomats stationed in Cuba and China reported debilitating health problems that would eventually be attributed to "Havana Syndrome" resulting from directed energy attacks of some description.
The Trump regime used those attacks to justify an abrupt exit and regression of relations with Cuba and a ratcheting of rhetoric toward China. But neither Cuba or China were responsible for the attacks that continue to this day.
According to a whistleblower who recently came forward to detail the former regime's handling of the situation, the State Department had concluded the attacks were probably the work of Russian intelligence using directed energy weapons as early as 2018.
As early as mid-2018, the State Department was administering its own internal medical tests specifically designed to evaluate patients who experienced “directed energy exposure” on foreign soil, according to two victims’ disclosure forms for the examinations. Both of their test results led to their immediate return to the U.S. [...]
While the U.S. has yet to publicly assign a cause or culprit for the symptoms, top officials and scientists are increasingly confident that they are the result of directed-energy attacks by a foreign government — likely Russia, according to intelligence officials — and the Biden administration has been providing weekly updates to the congressional intelligence committees.
The State Department’s apparent understanding in 2018 that [State Department whistleblower] Mark Lenzi's symptoms could have been caused by directed energy came two years before a National Academy of Sciences report declassified and published in 2020 concluded that “directed, pulsed radio frequency energy” was the likely source of the ailments. The number of suspected attacks on diplomats and CIA officers has risen substantially in the past year and have been reported on every continent except Antarctica.
Lenzi also says the State Department is dragging it's feet even under current leadership from the Biden administration. And that may be the case, but I suspect they're probably playing catch-up following the Trump regime's total disinterest in stopping the attacks.
It was obvious from the very beginning that Cuba did not have the capability to pull off these attacks, but that did not stop Trump from using it as an excuse to immediately undo one of President Obama's final accomplishments. The Obama administration made significant progress toward normalizing relations with Cuba which could have opened up both markets for tourism and trade, but Trump shut the door on those plans as soon as he could.
While the State Department had reached some early conclusions in 2018, the Trump regime did not report those conclusions to Congress until 2020.
I remember covering the National Academy of Sciences report after it was declassified in 2020, but they already knew what it was long before that. This story still fascinates me because it's kind of an open secret that Russian intelligence is harassing and assaulting diplomats across the world, but the American government doesn't have evidence they can present publicly or they're withholding it for other reasons. I'm not sure which explanation is more concerning.