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Updated Assessment of Anomalous Health Incidents | |
| 1 March 2023 | ICA 2023-02286-B | |
Scope Note: This IC-coordinated Intelligence Community Assessment addresses the question of whether one or more foreign actors bears responsibility, either deliberately or unintentionally, for causing anomalous health incidents (AHIs) reported by US Government officials across multiple agencies since 2016. The ICA was written in response to senior US policymaker interest and updates the IC’s previous assessment on AHIs published in January 2022.
Since US officials first reported AHIs in Havana, Cuba in late 2016, the IC has sought to understand whether these events can be attributed to a foreign actor and a deliberate external mechanism. The IC pursued three separate lines of inquiry: the first encompassed work determining whether available data points to the involvement of a foreign adversary in the incidents; the second focused on the feasibility and existence of deliberate mechanisms that an adversary might use against US personnel to cause AHIs; and the third evaluated whether medical analysis can help determine if an outside actor is involved in the broad range of phenomena and symptoms associated with AHIs. Based on the results of these three lines of inquiry, most IC agencies have concluded that it is “very unlikely” a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported AHIs. IC agencies have varying confidence levels, with two agencies at moderate-to-high confidence while three are at moderate confidence. Two agencies judge it is “unlikely” an adversary was responsible for AHIs and they do so with low confidence based on collection gaps and their review of the same evidence.
- Five agencies judge that available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents. Agencies employed an array of collection and investigative efforts that spanned hundreds of reported incidents—within the United States and abroad—and explored a range of potential indicators of hostile activity, from identifying suspicious persons near incident sites to searching for a pattern among affected personnel. These efforts could not identify an adversary as being responsible for any incident and in some key cases, IC agencies and partners had comprehensive information on the location where an AHI occurred but found no evidence of adversary activity. Most IC agencies judge it is very unlikely a foreign adversary played a role, although confidence in the judgment related to this line of inquiry varies, with two agencies having moderate-to-high confidence; three agencies having moderate confidence; and one agency abstaining. One agency judges it is only unlikely a foreign adversary played a role and has only low confidence in this judgment. This reflects its view that the evidence is less compelling because the IC has failed to detect some adversaries’ activities.
- A review of intelligence reporting, open-source information, and scientific and medical literature about foreign weapons and research programs, as well as engagement with researchers inside and outside the US Government have led IC agencies to judge that there is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or collection device that is causing AHIs. As a result, most agencies assess that deliberate causal mechanisms are very unlikely to have caused the sensory phenomena and adverse symptoms associated with AHIs but with varying confidence levels. Two agencies have high confidence in this judgment while three agencies have moderate confidence. Two agencies judge that deliberate causal mechanisms are unlikely to have caused AHIs and have low confidence because they judge that radiofrequency (RF) energy is a plausible cause for AHIs, based in part on the findings of the IC Expert Panel and the results of research by some US laboratories. All agencies acknowledge the value of additional research on potential adversary capabilities in the RF field, in part because
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