A Norwegian government scientist set out to debunk the theory that directed-energy weapons could cause the mysterious cluster of symptoms known as “Havana syndrome.” He built a high-power pulsed-microwave device, aimed it at himself, and reported experiencing the very symptoms he had hoped to disprove. The experiment, conducted as a self-test by a researcher working within the Norwegian government, offers a striking counterpoint to official intelligence assessments that have largely dismissed the directed-energy explanation for anomalous health incidents, or AHIs, affecting U.S. personnel abroad.
The episode underscores how unsettled the science and intelligence analysis around Havana syndrome remains. U.S. agencies have spent years investigating reports from diplomats, intelligence officers, and military personnel who describe sudden onset of pressure in the head, loud noises or sensations of sound, dizziness, cognitive impairment, and long-lasting neurological complaints. Official reviews have leaned toward natural or psychogenic explanations, arguing that the evidence for a hostile energy weapon is weak. Yet the Norwegian self-experiment, undertaken by a skeptic who expected to puncture the directed-energy theory, now sits uncomfortably alongside those conclusions and raises fresh questions about how definitive they really are.
A Skeptic Builds the Weapon He Doubted
The core of this story is almost too neat for fiction. A scientist employed by the Norwegian government, skeptical that pulsed microwaves could produce the constellation of symptoms reported by American diplomats and intelligence officers, decided to settle the question empirically. He constructed a high-power pulsed-microwave device and, rather than testing it on lab animals or simulations, conducted a self-experiment designed to show that the directed-energy hypothesis did not hold up. His intent, in other words, was to produce a null result and close the book on one of the more persistent theories behind Havana syndrome. According to reporting on the Norwegian work, the researcher’s project was known within government circles but was not part of any formal multinational investigation, underscoring how improvised much of the inquiry into AHIs has been.
Instead, the researcher reported developing symptoms that closely resembled those described by affected U.S. personnel. Details such as the precise power output, pulse duration, and exposure time have not been released, and the account relies heavily on the scientist’s own documentation of his experience. Still, the fact that a government-affiliated researcher, motivated by skepticism rather than advocacy, ended up replicating the symptom profile is difficult to dismiss outright. It suggests that controlled, individual-level exposure to pulsed microwaves may cross physiological thresholds that broader epidemiological reviews have failed to capture. This does not prove that a foreign adversary has deployed such a weapon, or that every reported AHI stems from the same cause. But it does complicate the clean narrative that directed energy can be ruled out as a contributing factor.
What U.S. Intelligence Concluded in 2023
The Norwegian experiment lands against a backdrop of official skepticism. In March 2023, a U.S. intelligence community review concluded that Havana syndrome was not caused by an energy weapon or a foreign adversary. The assessment, as reported by U.S. officials, cited a lack of consistent patterns among reported cases, insufficient forensic evidence, problems with geolocation data, and line-of-sight issues that made a directed-energy attack implausible in many of the incidents under review. Analysts also pointed to the diversity of symptom profiles and timelines as evidence that a single, exotic mechanism was unlikely to be responsible across dozens of locations and years.
For most of the intelligence agencies involved, these gaps were enough to close the question with moderate to high confidence. The review leaned toward explanations such as pre-existing medical conditions, environmental factors, and in some instances possible psychosomatic responses, while acknowledging that not every case could be fully explained. That conclusion, however, did not go unchallenged. Victims and their attorneys pushed back sharply, arguing that the intelligence review had moved too quickly toward closure and had not adequately accounted for cases that did not fit the preferred explanation. The pushback reflected a deeper frustration among affected personnel who felt their experiences were being minimized or folded into vague categories like stress and anxiety without serious engagement with the more alarming possibilities.
Symptoms at the NATO Summit
The intelligence community’s 2023 conclusions did not stop new incidents from occurring. A senior Department of Defense official experienced AHI-like symptoms during the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, an episode that the Pentagon confirmed in comments reported by Associated Press. The official reportedly developed sudden, unexplained symptoms consistent with prior AHI descriptions while attending the high-level gathering. The timing was notable: it came just months after the intelligence review had effectively declared the mystery solved, at least in terms of ruling out a hostile energy weapon as the likely cause.
The Vilnius case matters for a straightforward reason. If the intelligence community’s conclusion was correct and no adversary weapon exists, then the continued occurrence of AHI-like symptoms at sensitive events demands an alternative explanation that is equally specific. Stress, coincidence, and psychogenic factors have all been proposed, but none of these accounts easily explains why a senior defense official would develop sudden, distinctive symptoms at a NATO summit and not at dozens of other high-pressure events throughout a career. The pattern may not be tight enough for intelligence analysts to call it proof of an attack, but it is persistent enough to resist easy dismissal, especially when it recurs in locations and contexts that are geopolitically sensitive and saturated with security concerns.
Why Self-Experiments May Reveal What Studies Miss
One reason the Havana syndrome debate has stalled is that the available evidence sits in an awkward middle ground. Population-level studies of affected personnel have not produced the kind of clean, replicable biomarker that would settle the question. At the same time, individual case reports are detailed and consistent enough to resist blanket dismissal. The Norwegian scientist’s self-experiment occupies a different methodological space entirely. By building a device to known specifications and exposing himself under conditions he controlled, he created something closer to a controlled replication than anything the intelligence community’s review examined, as described in recent reporting on the episode.
This approach has obvious limitations. A single self-experiment is not a clinical trial, and the researcher’s expectations, even if he entered the test as a skeptic, could have influenced his perception of symptoms. Without independent medical evaluation, standardized neurocognitive testing, and blinded controls, the result is suggestive rather than definitive. Yet it points toward a productive direction for future research: small-scale, controlled exposure studies that can isolate the physiological effects of pulsed microwaves at specific power levels and frequencies. The intelligence community’s review focused on field forensics, pattern analysis, and plausibility assessments based on known adversary capabilities. It did not, based on available reporting, attempt to replicate the proposed mechanism in a laboratory setting. The Norwegian experiment, however informal, begins to fill that gap and suggests that the human body may respond to pulsed energy in ways that are not captured by existing safety standards or epidemiological surveys.
An Unfinished Investigation
There is a historical parallel worth considering. During the Gulf War syndrome debates of the 1990s, initial government assessments attributed veterans’ symptoms primarily to stress and dismissed environmental or chemical explanations as unlikely. It took years of additional research, much of it driven by affected veterans and independent scientists, before official positions evolved to acknowledge that multiple exposures and mechanisms might be at work. The comparison is not perfect: Havana syndrome involves a smaller population, a more exotic proposed mechanism, and a heavier overlay of intelligence secrecy. But the pattern of premature closure followed by inconvenient new evidence is familiar enough to warrant caution about treating the 2023 intelligence review as the final word.
The Norwegian self-experiment, the Vilnius incident, and the continuing reports of AHIs from scattered locations all point in the same direction: the investigation is not over. Even if most cases ultimately prove to have mundane explanations, the possibility that a subset may involve a novel or poorly understood mechanism cannot be dismissed on the basis of incomplete data. For U.S. and allied governments, that argues for a dual-track approach—continuing to provide medical care and institutional support to affected personnel while funding rigorous, transparent research into both directed-energy effects and alternative explanations. For the public, it is a reminder that intelligence assessments are snapshots, not verdicts, and that science often advances through uncomfortable anomalies that refuse to fit the prevailing theory. Until those anomalies are either convincingly explained or shown to be illusory, Havana syndrome will remain less a solved mystery than an open question with real human stakes.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
