RE: https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/116199894233969019

from day 1 I suspected microwave radiation. my theory was that it was microwave excitation of a passive bug, something like the infamous bug the Soviets planted in the Great Seal.

but this is also from a state-run propaganda outlet, so who knows.
it is interesting to think about a microwave pulse generator with a focused high gain antenna. short pulses could be hard to detect with a traditional spectrum analyzer, particularly if the frequency jumps around
another possibility: organophosphates and pyrethroid insecticides overused due to the Zika scare. 🤷‍♂️
@tubetime The extremely sudden onset of symptoms in a lot of cases seems less consistent with poisoning and more with "somebody stuck their head in the beam path"
@azonenberg or "application of powerful insecticide an hour before"
@tubetime My first job out of college I worked on radar detection in the 2-18GHz range. There are good broadband pulse detection techniques available but you need a lot of parallelism and I've often wondered just how much effort was expended to analyze the RF environment in these Havana Syndrome cases.
@tubetime thats the thing that should have been easily found by "Bug Detectors" which are intentionally wideband receivers, perhaps even a radar warner if it covers the right frequency band

@tubetime But would short pulses allow one to obtain intelligible audio?

Or would it simply be used to charge a battery and-or activate a high bandwidth download?

@marshray @tubetime I suspect it would be used to just charge a capacitor to run the circuitry for a short period of time.
@marshray
Actually if you did sub -microsecond bursts at 8kHz, you could probably get fine audio if it was sample and hold type.
@tubetime
@encthenet @tubetime I could see that, but you’d still have to increase the power to compensate for a smaller duty cycle.
I’m no expert, but it seems like any beam transferring enough power to usefully charge an energy storage capacitor or battery ought to stand out on an SA.
@marshray
Assuming you were close enough to the beam probably, but the narrow beam is to hopefully avoid that. And with a narrow enough beam the ERP can get quite high.
@tubetime

@encthenet
even better you could use a pseudorandom pattern of pulses, to an receiver who does not know the pattern (to synchronously control the sample and hold stage) this appears as just some noise but gives no hint to an active microphone

@marshray @tubetime

@tubetime unintended side effects of a bugging technique is a theory i've heard before and is the most plausible explanation to date
@tubetime This type of pulse is easy to detect in the time domain with a diode detector and an oscilloscope. Throw in a log amp after the detector to be fancy about it.
@tubetime even a big dish antenna has enough sidelobes such that detection of high power pulse transmitters is easy.