The most probable cause of a series of mysterious afflictions that have sickened American spies and diplomats abroad in the past several years was radio-frequency energy, a type of radiation that includes microwaves, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has concluded in a report.
The conclusion by a committee of 19 experts in medicine and other fields cited "directed, pulsed radio-frequency energy” as "the most plausible mechanism” to explain the illness, which came to be known as Havana syndrome, although they said that they could not rule out other possible causes and that secondary factors may have contributed to symptoms, according to a copy of the report obtained by The New York Times.
The report, which was commissioned by the State Department, provides the most definitive explanation yet of the strange illness that struck scores of government employees, first at the U.S. Embassy in Havana in 2016 and subsequently in China and other countries. Many of the officers suffered from dizziness, fatigue, headaches and loss of hearing, memory and balance, and some were forced into permanent retirement.