The thing is, if it’s actually some sort of sonic or microwave weapon, there’s no way that they could aim it so precisely that only the American & Canadian diplomats were affected.
If it’s a weapon, then it has to be:
a) mobile
b) run without any obvious external power source
c) targeted so precisely that only certain diplomats are affected, not any staff or Cuban people who just happened to be going about their lives
d) mostly soundless
e) small enough to not be noticed
I kind of lean towards a seafood poisoning or parasite, myself. Or possibly some sort of neurotoxin.
No idea, and it makes me wonder if maybe there isn’t really an attack going on. But if there is, I’ll fanwank that the Canadians aren’t likely to retaliate, so if the US does, it makes the Americans look that much more isolated.
Also possible in this sort of case is “industrial accident,” by which I mean some misunderstood or unknown consequence of some industrial process. A small number of industrial or engineering disasters worldwide have come to our attention through a similar process of vague reports of poorly-defined symptoms. It can take a long time to identify a cause and figure out the whole story.
This hypothetically could be unintended side effects due to subsonics produced by some industrial or construction process, or an inadvertent/undetected chemical release, or what have you. While unlikely, I’d wager an undiscovered/unmonitored safety issue is slightly more likely in Cuba than in, say, the U.S. or European countries.
People assume that a one-party dictatorship is somehow monolithic. They really aren’t. There are people and groups at odds with each other all the time, trying to undermine others, etc.
There could well be a group in the Cuban security/military branches that doesn’t want to see improved relations with the US and are trying to create an incident between the two countries.
Note that if you bombard a point with specially set sound waves from several angles, where they intersect you can get a strong signal at some other frequency. And objects can really resonate to amplify things locally.
Just a guess, but someone other than the cubans might be trying to hack an air gapped computer. Directing sounds into the mic input on a laptop or desktop. The dips might have been collateral casualties.
Cuba, like N. Korea and Iran, has maintained stability for so long primarily by using The Evil United States to divert attention from the internal problems.
There are also various ways of generating a focused, directional beam of sound, so there is no reason a sonic (or microwave) weapon could not be aimed to affect a precise target, if someone wanted to do such a thing.
What ever it is. There’s a waveform that instruments can pick up and it can be traced back to it’s source.
For example, I could use a frequency generator to create a 26 khz signal and broadcast it with a PA system throughout my neighborhood. Every dog would be howling in agony. People won’t hear it.
That signal would easily be picked up by a meter and the source found.
I suspect a very low frequency weapon in Cuba. There’s been research on them for decades. Can’t be heard, but our bodies react to them.
