Case Study
Havana Syndrome Case
US diplomatic and intelligence personnel, 2015-2023
Starting in 2015-2016, US diplomats and intelligence officers stationed in Havana began reporting a cluster of unexplained symptoms — hearing strange sounds, feelings of heat or pressure — leading the US to pull over half its embassy staff out of Cuba. Similar reports subsequently emerged from US personnel in Moscow, China, and elsewhere, and continued as recently as a 2021 incident affecting a diplomat during Vice President Kamala Harris's tour of Asia.
Competing explanations: a 2023 US House Intelligence Committee report suggested a foreign adversary using pulsed electromagnetic energy weapons. Many psychologists reject this, citing the implausibility of one adversary coordinating covert attacks across dozens of unrelated global locations with an unidentified weapon, and instead attribute the pattern to mass psychogenic illness triggered by a genuinely high-stress occupational environment (intelligence and diplomatic work). See Mass Hysteria (Herd Mentality).
Discussed in
- Episode 165 — 165-is-mass-hysteria-more-common-than-you-think