 Hackers, Havana Syndrome, and other invisible Russian aggressions that only the CIA can see. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is reportedly marking up its hilarious Havana Syndrome Attacks Response Act this week, which calls for sanctions upon whoever the president determines is responsible for inflicting U.S. officials with hangover-like symptoms using high-tech microwave beams. The condition has not been proven to actually exist in any tangible way, and has been commonly attributed to psychogenic illness, Cuban crickets, and actual hangovers. At the same time, virulent Russia Gator Julia Ioffe has published an anonymously sourced article proclaiming that the Kremlin is responsible for this mysterious alleged ailment. In an article for Puck News titled Havana Syndrome, a Cold War saga in Bidens, Washington, Ioffe reports that anonymous sources at the Walter Reed Military Medical Center have told her that this strange affliction now has so many victims among U.S. government employees that the facility is at capacity, and that Russia is to blame for it. Ioffe writes, quote, the intelligence community is increasingly convinced that the Russian government is behind these attacks. Russia has extensively studied and invested in the technology and, in the spring of 2017, just as the attacks in Havana were ramping up, Putin personally pinned a medical on the breast of a young scientist for his advances in using directed energy and microwaves on signals, systems, and living cells. Russia certainly has the motive. Putin still thinks America is Russia's biggest enemy, and poking the country in the eye is a worthy end in and of itself. Plus, there's that location data placing FSB officers in the same Taiwanese hotel where a senior CIA official was hit. But there still isn't enough evidence to make a public declaration. They believe the hypothesis is more, but they don't have a smoking gun, said the person familiar with the investigation, end quote. To get a sense for the integrity of the sourcing in Ioffe's reporting, here's an actual paragraph from the article and I'll add emphasis with my voice. Quote, Burns has also convened a panel of intelligence officials to try to find whoever is behind these attacks. A spokesperson for the agency told me that the CIA is bringing an intensity and expertise to this issue akin to our efforts in finding bin Laden. She added, We will keep doing everything we can to protect our officers. People familiar with the inquiry tell me that the political will behind this is palpable. As one source told me, whereas before you might have said that folks working on the issue spent half their time trying to convince people that something happened, that kind of distraction has dissipated to a large degree, end quote. This is the kind of sourcing that would make a UK gossip rag blush. Here's another delightful bit, quote, I think we're beyond the point of anyone being able to question whether it's a real thing. A senior administration official told me, end quote. Ah well, if an anonymous government official tells Julia Ioffe that Havana syndrome is real then hot damn that's good enough for me. Apart from anonymous individuals, Ioffe also cites a quote retired CIA officer named Mark Polymeropoulos who attests that he himself came down with a case of Havana syndrome that was so bad it forced him to, quote, retire. Ioffe writes, quote. As we talked I couldn't square two things, Mark's retirement and his age, he had just turned 50 and by his own account he had been on the up and up at the CIA. Why had he left so soon, I asked him. But Mark's answer surprised me, Havana syndrome he told me off the record that he had been hit while visiting Moscow and that the attack had undermined his health so badly that he physically couldn't work anymore. A promising career in an organization he loved and had come of age in was over, end quote. Oh wow, the retired CIA spook had to retire because he was afflicted with a condition which just so happens to advance CIA Cold War hysteria about a CIA targeted nation and now he's spending his, quote, retirement telling Cold War propagandists all about it. Mm-hmm. Havana syndrome is a mysterious illness whose symptoms include vertigo, nausea, and billions of dollars in new Cold War military spending. It's just so interesting how Russia keeps attacking America in unverifiable and invisible ways that only the US intelligence community can see. First it was plot hole riddled claims that Russian hackers attacked American democracy in 2016 and now it's invisible microwave beams from secret Kremlin ray guns. Someday soon we may turn on the news to see footage of an empty capital building while a reporter solemnly tells us that it has just been stormed by GRU agents injected with invisibility serum. I'm old enough to remember when the US war machine needed actual physical events to justify the advancements of its military agendas, like planes crashing into buildings. Nowadays those agendas are justified by invisible, unverifiable allegations for which the evidence is always classified. Believing that Kremlin operatives are attacking the brains of US government employees with ray guns which cause mild hangover-like symptoms is no less crazy and baseless than the claims by internet crackpots that the COVID vaccine contains 5G mind control nanobots. Literally the only difference is that one has been endorsed by the mainstream US political media class while the other has not. When a poor person says spies are attacking their brain with microwave beams, it's called paranoid schizophrenia. When a US government operative says it, it's called Havana syndrome.