The Pentagon purchased the device in the final days of the Biden administration for a sum exceeding “eight figures,” U.S. media report
14ymedio, Madrid, January 14, 2026 — The U.S. government has spent a year testing a secretly acquired device that could be responsible for the mysterious symptoms known as Havana Syndrome. This was reported by U.S. media outlets such as CNN and CBS News, citing several knowledgeable sources, in separate reports published on Tuesday.
According to one of these sources, the device emits pulsed radio waves, the type of energy that some specialists have identified as the possible cause of the incidents, which affected hundreds of U.S. diplomats deployed not only in Cuba but also in other parts of the world. The same sources say the device, which is about the size of a backpack, “has Russian components,” although it “is not exclusively of Russian origin.”
The device, the reports continue, was purchased by a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) using Department of Defense funds in the final days of the administration of former President Joe Biden for a multimillion-dollar sum that exceeded “eight figures,” although the sources did not disclose the exact amount.
“The device is still under study and there is an ongoing debate”
Both CNN and CBS sought confirmation from the Pentagon, DHS, and the CIA, but all declined to comment. “The device is still under study and there is an ongoing debate (and in some sectors of the government, skepticism) about its link to the roughly dozens of anomalous health incidents that officially remain unexplained,” CNN’s report states, making clear that nothing has yet been definitively established.
The symptoms described by patients who have reported being victims of Havana Syndrome—officially called “anomalous health incidents” (AHI)—include chronic headaches, vertigo, tinnitus (the perception of sounds that do not originate from external sources), insomnia, nausea, psychophysiological impairment, and, in some cases, blindness or hearing loss.
The appearance of these health incidents among U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Havana was one of the reasons the normalization with Cuba initiated by Barack Obama during his presidency did not move forward. In 2017, during his first term, President Donald Trump decided to suspend consular services in Havana and reduce diplomatic staff on the Island to a minimum.
The Cuban government has always denied any responsibility and set up a commission of experts that found no scientific or criminal evidence
Meanwhile, the Cuban government consistently denied any responsibility and launched a commission of experts that found no scientific or criminal evidence linking the symptoms to possible sonic attacks, microwaves, or other deliberate actions.
On March 1, 2023, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), led by Avril D. Haines, published a report prepared by seven U.S. intelligence agencies stating that it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary caused what is known as Havana Syndrome.
However, an investigation by The Insider, 60 Minutes, and Der Spiegel, published in April 2024, claimed that the illness could have originated from “directed energy” weapons operated by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU, by its Russian initials). The report presented, for example, testimony from victims who said they saw members of the notorious Unit 29155 of Russian military intelligence at the sites of the attacks.
It also presented as evidence the fact that senior members of the unit received “awards and political promotions” for work related to the development of “non-lethal acoustic weapons”— that is, “directed energy devices,” using sound or radio frequencies, capable of producing “acoustic effects” in victims’ brains.
The 2023 ODNI report had also been criticized by experts such as Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA officer and himself a victim of the condition. In an interview with América TeVé that same year, he said he felt “betrayed” by the report and continued to point to Cuba and Russia as responsible for the attacks.
“It has all the characteristics of a Russian active measure. This is what a successful action looks like, one that frightens the adversary”
“I would say it has all the characteristics of a Russian active measure. This is what a successful action looks like, one that frightens the adversary, pulls people away from their duties, and distracts,” the former intelligence officer told the Miami-based network at the time.
Another report, published on December 5, 2024, by the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, sharply questioned the investigation conducted by Haines’s office. According to the document, subtitled Is the Intelligence Community Concealing the True Cause of This Phenomenon?, the conclusions of the body tasked with investigating the case are “at best questionable and, at worst, misleading.”
A subcommittee appointed by the House of Representatives reopened the investigation into Havana Syndrome after concluding that the findings of the Intelligence Community (IC), including the CIA—which maintains that no foreign agents were involved—were not reliable, “lacked analytical integrity, and were highly irregular in their formulation.”
“The Intelligence Community has at every turn attempted to frustrate the subcommittee’s investigative efforts to uncover the truth. Despite this, the subcommittee has found information that illustrates the problems that arose in the process of drafting, reviewing, and publishing the Intelligence Community’s report,” the congressional subcommittee added, urging the authors to urgently publish a new assessment that properly incorporated all the information collected.
Although at the time a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence rejected the subcommittee’s conclusions to the U.S. press, it was precisely around those dates when, according to CNN and CBS sources, the Pentagon acquired the mysterious device that is still under study today.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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