> but that kind of person can't get a security clearance or get taken seriously by the State Department.

This feels similar to the early Area 51 law suits which were thrown out because the government denied the facility existed. I feel that yes, the government was aware of the situation but downplayed it because they have something to hide.

My tin foil hat explanation is that the US government was fully aware of what was happening. Why is unknown though I could guess that A. the US denied knowledge of such weapons to give plausible deniability which leads to B. The US deployed such a weapon on premises to use/test against Cubans and inadvertently sickened their own people in an accident.

I don't doubt Cuba could initiate such an attack but I find it very unlikely the US would be befuddled when the US government along with others have developed and experimented with sonic weapons. Given the recent trends towards more authoritarian governments these weapons are easy to deploy against citizens. This article was posted to hn recently: https://earshotngo.substack.com/p/sonic-attack-on-a-silent-v...

One proposal I've heard is that the US also has weapons like these and wanted to keep their existence classified.

I could have been more clear, but yes, that is my point too.

MAE is kind of obvious, because healthy ears are incredibly sensitive. 0 dbSPL translates to attowatts on the eardrum displacing it just a few pm, with hair cells firing on sub-nm movements (after mechanical amplification). It is completely unsurprising that just the thermal effect of RF being pulsed in the general direction of the head can become audible in the right circumstances.