It’s no secret that the US military budget is the largest in the world, and indeed one of the largest in the history of human civilization. Over the summer, for example, Donald Trump proposed a $1.01 trillion national defense budget to pay for things like hypersonic missiles, warships, and his laughable Golden Dome.
Another dubious purchase by the Defense Department? A strange little gun rumored to cause Havana syndrome.
First, a little background. “Havana syndrome” is a term given to the widely disputed health condition experienced by US and Canadian state department personnel stationed overseas. Though symptoms vary wildly, they tend to center on some combination of dizziness, headaches, visual disturbances, and neurological issues.
The first incidents were reported in Cuba, hence the name, although additional cases were also linked by the press to China, Vienna, and the suburbs of Washington, DC. Cases of the mysterious ailment have been cited as far back as 2016, though — crucially — no compelling cause has ever been found.
This is where the US military spending comes in. New reporting by CNN revealed that the Pentagon has spent the past year dissecting a strange device worth millions of dollars for possible links to the illness. Four sources, speaking to the publication anonymously, said the Defense Department provided some “eight figures” in funding to a division of the Department of Homeland Security called Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which purchased the weapon in an undercover operation.
A year later, the device is still being studied by government researchers. According to one of CNN‘s sources, the gadget produces the kind of pulsed radio waves, which some have speculated could be the cause of Havana syndrome. Details are scarce, though the unidentified sources noted it contains “some Russian parts,” and is small enough to fit in a typical backpack.
Notably, the purchase came under the Biden administration, right as it was transitioning out of office. It also comes after a 2023 study published in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry argued that Havana syndrome was really nothing more than a “socially constructed catch-all category for an array of pre-existing health conditions, responses to environmental factors, and stress reactions that were lumped under a single label.”
Now it seems the door has been blown wide once again. Maybe this mystery device will finally put the whole thing to rest — or maybe it’ll be just one more stunning waste of taxpayer funds.
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