The U.S. government has a device that causes Havana Syndrome. It has tested it on animals. It has classified footage of Americans being struck by it overseas. The CIA knows exactly what this weapon does.
Yet the CIA still won’t say who is responsible for Americans attacked with such a device.
A Device Without a Name
In late 2024, DHS Homeland Security Investigations agents used over $15 million in Pentagon funding to purchase a portable, backpack-sized weapon from a Russian criminal group.
At first glance you might think that’s lot of money but the Pentagon under Hegseth last September spent $15.1 million on ribeye steak alone and another $7 million on lobster tail. Don’t ask how much was spent on Hegseth’s makeup room.
The device purchase exposed that the vital device components were made in Russia. It operates silently, programmable for different scenarios, operable by remote control, and capable of penetrating windows and drywall at a range of several hundred feet. It doesn’t look like much and certainly not a weapon. The software does the work: like a medical tool it shapes a unique electromagnetic wave that rapidly pulses, narrowly targeting electrically active organic tissue.
For years, the CIA argued a microwave weapon capable of causing Havana Syndrome injuries victims would be very large and therefore hard to operate covertly, the size of a truck.
That argument is long gone.
Test Results Are In
The weapon has been in a U.S. military lab for over a year. Tests on rats and sheep produced injuries consistent with those seen in humans diagnosed with Havana Syndrome. Sources who spoke to 60 Minutes also described classified security footage showing Americans being struck overseas — including incidents at CIA headquarters in Virginia and on the grounds of the White House. The CIA declined to comment.
Stanford microbiologist David Relman, who chaired two government investigations into Havana Syndrome, explained the mechanism:
When you produce pulses like this, you can actually stimulate electrically active tissue like brain tissue and the heart… mimicking what the brain normally does, but now you’re driving it with your pulses from the outside.
Norway Accidentally Confirmed It
A Norwegian government scientist with a reputation as a leading skeptic of directed-energy weapon theories discovered the opposite of his intent. He constructed his own pulsed microwave device in 2024 to prove, with himself as the test subject, that such technology was harmless. He instead harmed himself enough to suffer neurological symptoms consistent with Havana Syndrome: headaches, vertigo, memory loss, hearing loss, cognitive disruption.
The Norwegian government informed the CIA. The Pentagon and White House each sent delegations to Norway to examine his device.
U.S. officials noted that his symptoms were not a clinical match for every documented AHI case, but confirmed the core finding: pulsed-energy devices can cause measurable neurological injury in humans.
A skeptic built a device to disprove the theory and caused his own brain damage instead.
CIA Struggles to Deny
A former CIA officer who worked the agency’s Havana Syndrome investigation told 60 Minutes that the unit’s mission, from the beginning, was to:
bring down the temperature
The agency has been steering conclusions toward environmental causes. This tracks with what victims have documented for years. CIA senior leadership privately accused them of fabricating symptoms for financial gain, denied medical care, and required participation in research as a condition of treatment.
The 60 Minutes investigation further found that incidents had been reported at CIA headquarters and on White House grounds, which make “environmental factors” an implausible explanation on their face.
The 2023 intelligence community assessment concluded it was “very unlikely” a foreign adversary was responsible. And that assessment held through a January 2025 update.
So what, it’s a domestic adversary?
A Big Split
The intelligence community is now formally divided on the issue, as evidence no longer can be explained away. The NSA and the National Ground Intelligence Center have shifted positions, acknowledging the possibility that a foreign actor possesses technology capable of producing biological effects consistent with documented AHI cases. The CIA and four other agencies aren’t having it, and continue to hold the “very unlikely” line.
This is not a difference of analytical interpretation. The U.S. defense experts have a working device, animal trial results, classified impact footage, and an accidental human replication in Norway. The CIA has a weak conclusion it reached in 2023 and has declined to revisit.
Proliferation Risk
The operation that obtained the device exposed an arms dealer situation. Obviously if undercover HSI agents could buy this weapon from dealers in the arms market, Russia doesn’t keep or control it. These devices are not confined to state programs. They are circulating. Any billionaire these days could buy one, especially if the CIA keeps denying they even exist. The question is who makes them, how fast, how many of them are out there, who has them, and who has been harmed.
The CIA’s continued position does not engage with any of this. It predates the device acquisition, predates the animal trials, predates Norway, and predates the classified footage. It is a conclusion held in place by institutional investment in a prior judgment.
That means the agency is actively refusing to do analysis. That is a cover.