[api]

The biggest mystery to me is why the hell someone would do this. What are they gaining? Are they trying to frame someone else? Just disrupt operations? For the spy vs spy lulz?

Second biggest mystery is how they haven't just triangulated these. Someone in signals intelligence told me once that signal jamming is not a big problem on the battlefield because a signal jammer is also a bright RF beacon that says "shoot missile here." Seems like this should be the same. A microwave beam powerful or weirdly modulated enough to do this should also be an arrow that says "send camo dudes with big guns here." That's definitely going to happen if you are targeting the Vice President. Or maybe it did happen and it's secret.

[oxymoran]

This is why: “ Five years on, reports now number in the hundreds and, the BBC has been told, span every continent, leaving a real impact on the US's ability to operate overseas. ”

[Emma_Goldman]

Exactly. Russia's modus operandi for dealing with the West is asymmetric warfare designed to interrupt, hamstring and confuse, without ever crossing the line into conventional warfare - which Russia cannot finance or win. This would fit neatly into that category, not that I have any idea of who is responsible. The point is that if there is an attacker, the motives are far from inscrutable.

[alistaira]

For the second, I get the impression that this is less of a case of a building being bathed in EM radiation (as a jammer might) but (excuse my unscientific attempt at this description) several beams of EM radiation creating a superposition at their point of intersection in 3D space.

The latter case would be harder to triangulate as you'd need to have multiple detectors positioned along each beam line in order to determine the range of each emitter.

[jonathanstrange]

One reason to do this is to disrupt activities of foreign intelligence services, increase their paranoia, decrease their morale. The key is to do it randomly and not too often. That is under the assumption it's not a side-effect of surveillance tools, which would also be possible.

To give you a comparison, the East-German Stasi used to enter the homes of dissidents and do things like re-arranging towels, replacing fresh milk with rotten milk, etc. They also occasionally forced or convinced personal physicians to hand out the wrong medication to dissidents, worsening conditions of the patients or creating strange side-effects. They also radiated political detainees in prison to cause cancer. These were called Zersetzungsmaßnahmen.

I'd consider it credible that modern successors of the KGB like GRU and SRV, as well as related or allied agencies, could do something nefarious using technical equipment. That's why US agencies are investigating the reports, I guess.

[jonplackett]

Maybe it’s currently just a test to see if it works & can be gotten away with.

Does anyone know how powerful it would have to be and therefore how mobile it could be?

[SiempreViernes]

Why would you test it this way? And to be clear, "this way" means all over the world in many different places but always from afar and usually without any obvious way for the distant operators to know what the effects are.

Surely you could either test it domestically or against low profile targets in situations where you could closely study the effects.

[jonplackett]

We're going too far down the conspiracy path now, but maybe they did that already and this is step 2?

Or maybe it's just aliens... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[JoshTko]

Many possible reasons. If Russia is behind this, it's a great proof of concept test of low traceable weapon that can target and disable high value targets of relatively high profile.

[SiempreViernes]

There are only stupid reasons to test a secret weapon in the exact place you want to secretly use it later.

So these aren't intended as tests, they are either intended as attacks or else just something that USG employees get for other reasons.

[ajsnigrutin]

Yep, you test it on your own homeless people, so if you fuck up, noone finds out. If you target a powerfull enemy, you do that intentionally. And with all the speculation about microwaves, noone ever though to actually measure/detect them? EE collage students could do that, ham operators do that (and triangulate them) for fun and competition, and the USA/CIA/... couldn't?

[JoshTko]

Who said secret? The point is that it just needs to be untraceable back to Russia.

[api]

Sometimes with these things I wonder if it might not be a marketing demonstration, sort of like how DDOS as a service providers used to try to take down GitHub to demonstrate their power to potential clients.

"Look at what we did to the US diplomatic corps! For only a few million or a few suitcases of cocaine you too can have this power to use against dissidents in your own country!"

[huhtenberg]

Testing new weapons on people whose job is to be paranoid is not a very smart thing to do.