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The Sound and the Fury: Sonic Weapons in Cuba

Posted: August 13th, 2017

Talk of espionage today has focused on Russian spies and the hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But recent reports of painful and unexplained hearing loss by U.S. diplomats in Cuba have raised questions about both the spy craft that may have caused it as well as the possible motivations behind it. Heather Nauert, the spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, told reporters that the U.S. does not “have any definitive answers about the source” of the hearing loss. To better understand what kind of “sonic weapon” could have been used in Cuba, The Cipher Brief’s Kaitlin Lavinder spoke with H. Keith Melton, an intelligence historian and author of the book CIA Special Weapons and Equipment.

The Cipher Brief: You’ve said the motives of spying don’t necessarily change over time, but some of the devices do. In this recent case, in Cuba, the “acoustic attack” – what would a motive of such an attack be?

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