U.S. agents secretly purchased a portable microwave weapon capable of causing brain injuries like those reported in Havana Syndrome cases, according to a new investigation by “60 Minutes.”
The device — small enough to carry in a backpack and powerful enough to send a beam through walls and windows — was reportedly obtained from a Russian criminal network in a covert 2024 operation funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.
U.S. officials tested the still-classified weapon for more than a year at a military laboratory. Experiments on rats and sheep produced injuries similar to those reported by American diplomats, intelligence officers and military personnel who say they were “struck by an unseen force.”
Since 2016, hundreds of possible Havana Syndrome incidents have been reported around the world — and even inside the U.S. Some reportedly occurred near the White House and at CIA headquarters in Virginia.
Victims describe sudden attacks that feel like a powerful force striking the head.
One former Air Force officer told “60 Minutes” he was hit five times in five months in 2020, all in his own home in northern Virginia.
“The second attack, I was standing in my kitchen looking out at the back woods, and it felt like an immediate vice on my head. Immediately disoriented, confused and dizzy,” he said.
“The fifth one was by far the worst … I woke up with a full body convulsion. The worst pain I have ever felt. It felt like a vice gripping my brain stem was there,” he said.
Others reported piercing ear pain, vertigo, ringing in the ears, headaches and lasting neurological damage.
‘People all over the country’ are getting sick
Millions of people report headaches, insomnia, heart palpitations and other symptoms when exposed to electromagnetic radiation (EMR).
Scientists often describe clusters of symptoms linked to high exposure to electromagnetic fields as EMR Syndrome, “microwave syndrome” or RF sickness.
According to Miriam Eckenfels, director of the EMR & Wireless Program at Children’s Health Defense, the “60 Minutes” report highlights a key detail: The weapon appears to rely on specific patterns of pulsed radiofrequency (RF) radiation.
“The piece shows that Havana Syndrome is linked to ‘unique’ pulsation and modulation of RF radiation,” Eckenfels said. “That’s important because 5G technology also relies on pulsation and modulation.”
She said the overlap helps explain why people around the country report experiencing symptoms after exposure to wireless infrastructure.
“We’re hearing from people all over the country who say they’re getting sick at an increasingly fast pace when exposed to 5G towers and antennas,” Eckenfels said.
Symptoms of Havana Syndrome mirror EMR sickness
Scientists have suspected for years that microwave radiation could be responsible for at least some of the Havana Syndrome injuries.
“The most plausible explanation for a subset of these cases was a form of radio frequency or microwave energy,” said Dr. David A. Relman, a physician at Stanford University who led government investigations into the mysterious illness in the early 2020s.
Microwaves, part of the electromagnetic spectrum, power everyday technologies, including radar, Wi-Fi and cellphones. Researchers have studied their biological effects for decades.
Relman said earlier research — much of it conducted in the former Soviet Union — explored how pulsed microwave energy could disrupt the brain and nervous system.
Those experiments showed the radiation could trigger “loss of consciousness to seizures to memory lapses, inability to concentrate, headaches, intense pressure, pain, disorientation, difficulty with balance,” Relman said.
Many of those symptoms closely match what Havana Syndrome victims report.
“When you produce pulses like this, you can actually stimulate electrically active tissue like brain tissue,” Relman said.
Eckenfels said the list of symptoms also mirrors those reported by people suffering from EMR exposure.
“The symptoms we hear from Havana Syndrome victims — tinnitus, cognitive impairment, brain fog, trouble sleeping, hearing loss, headaches and dizziness — are all well-documented symptoms of EMR sickness linked to radiofrequency radiation from cellphones and towers,” she said. “The parallels are striking, and we should be paying attention.”
However, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reviewed the illnesses reported by U.S. diplomats in Cuba in 2016 and later in China, and stopped short of blaming microwave weapons.
According to its 2020 report, there were “multiple hypotheses” as to what caused the symptoms, “but evidence has been lacking, no hypothesis has been proven and the circumstances remain unclear.”
Pentagon introduced weapon using targeted waves in 2001
According to “60 Minutes,” the weapon obtained by U.S. investigators can operate silently and does not produce the noticeable heat associated with a microwave oven.
The device can be programmed to emit rapidly pulsing electromagnetic waves and can be controlled remotely from hundreds of feet away. Investigators say the beam can penetrate materials such as glass and drywall. (See link for article and ’60 Minutes’ report)
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https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/wireless-radiation-limits-at-least-200-times-too-high-to-protect-against-cancer-risks/?
Wireless Radiation Limits at Least 200 Times Too High to Protect Against Cancer Risks
Wireless radiation safety limits are at least 200 times too high to protect people from cancer risks, according to a study published March 14 in Environmental Health. Current limits are also 8 to 24 times too high to protect against male reproductive harm, including decreased sperm count, sperm vitality and testosterone levels, the scientists concluded.
March 17, 2026
Safety limits for radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by cellphones, Wi-Fi routers, cell towers and other wireless devices are at least 200 times too high to protect people from cancer risk, according to scientists with the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF).
Current limits are also 8 to 24 times too high to protect against male reproductive harm, including decreased sperm count, sperm vitality and testosterone levels, the scientists concluded.
“Current FCC and ICNIRP public exposure limits need to be reduced by at least 200 times to maintain an acceptable environmental cancer risk of 1 in 100,000,” according to a press release citing the March 14 report in Environmental Health.
The researchers noted that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) set their wireless radiation safety limits based on a handful of studies from the 1980s.
The studies, which had small sample sizes, measured only the short-term impact of RF radiation at levels high enough to heat human tissue.
In the U.S., the FCC sets the wireless radiation limits. Many other countries base their limits on ICNIRP’s recommendations.
ICNIRP is a self-selecting group with “longstanding industry ties that is accountable to no one,” according to the Environmental Health Trust.
Ronald Melnick, Ph.D., a retired toxicologist from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the study’s lead author, said in the ICBE-EMF press release that governments need to “step up, abandon these obsolete guidelines, and conduct rigorous risk assessments using modern toxicological data.”
Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the study’s authors, said, “We are constantly surrounded by devices emitting wireless radiation; yet government regulations do not account for the chronic, low-level exposures they create.”
For their report, Melnick and Moskowitz applied standard risk-assessment methods developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to research on RF radiation conducted during the last 30 years.
They found that current wireless radiation limits would need to be drastically altered to protect people, assuming people were exposed 8 hours a day to wireless radiation.
“The science is there; now we need the policy to catch up so we can protect public and occupational health,” Melnick said.
Melnick and Moskowitz authored the study on behalf of ICBE-EMF, a “consortium of scientists, doctors and related professionals” who study wireless radiation and recommend wireless radiation exposure guidelines “based on the best peer-reviewed scientific research publications.”
FCC continues to defy 2021 court order that it review its safety limits
The study comes as the FCC continues to defy a 2021 court order to provide a better explanation for how its current limits — which haven’t been updated since 1996 — adequately protect human health.
The court order directed the FCC to review 11,000 pages of evidence supporting claims that wireless radiation at levels currently allowed by the FCC harms people — especially kids — and the environment.
Meanwhile, the FCC has proposed a rule change that, if adopted, would allow for the uncontrolled proliferation of new cell towers. U.S. lawmakers are advancing a bill that would accomplish the same thing.
“The fact that the FCC has not only failed to comply with the court order, but is accelerating deployment of wireless infrastructure in the meantime, is outrageous,” said Miriam Eckenfels, director of CHD’s Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program. (See link for article)
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