The Siege Inside the Brain

Havana Syndrome and the Emergence of Cognitive Warfare

Part 2 of a series on Cognitive Warfare (Part one is here)

In late 2016 a handful of U.S. embassy personnel in Havana began reporting sudden onset of symptoms such as loud noises, ear pain, head pressure, dizziness, and cognitive difficulties. These incidents were characterized by their acute nature and the absence of visible injuries. Within months, other American personnel stationed in Havana reported eerily similar experiences: sudden bursts of auditory phenomena, searing pressure, nausea, vertigo, and what would later be described as an untraceable, unconventionally acquired brain injury.

The term “Havana Syndrome” soon entered diplomatic lexicons and media headlines, but the phrase is a misnomer, geographically narrow, clinically hesitant. The truth is both broader and more alarming. These were not isolated incidents. Reports emerged from embassies in Austria, China, Poland, India, Taiwan and even inside the United States, impacting over 1,000 personnel.

A 2020 study by the National Academies of Sciences concluded that directed, pulsed radio frequency energy was the most plausible explanation for these symptoms, which presented as “distinctive, acute, audio-vestibular symptoms and signs” indicative of damage to the labyrinth or the vestibulocochlear nerve. But the core revelation was not technological. It was conceptual. This is not Cold War redux. This is something newer, subtler, and more insidious. This is cognitive warfare.

The Senate subcommittee investigating the matter states:

“One distinguishing characteristic of reported AHIs (Havana Syndrome) was the acute onset of audiovestibular sensory phenomena, including sound and/or pressure, sometimes in just one ear or one side of the head. In some cases, other individuals in close proximity did not hear the sound as would be expected for a usual ambient sound wave. Another feature was the rapid onset of acute signs and symptoms, concurrent with or within seconds of the sensory phenomena. These acute signs and symptoms were often connected with the inner ear and included vertigo, loss of balance, or ear pain, as well as a sense of locality or directionality. They occurred in a wide variety of combinations and varied among reports. Subacute signs and symptoms—those that last hours to days after the acute event has ended—included headache, nausea, persistent vertigo or other symptoms of imbalance, a sense of fatigue, and difficulty with cognitive tasks. Acute or subacute signs and symptoms were followed by chronic signs and symptoms that lasted weeks, months, and even years in some individuals. These long-term signs and symptoms included persistent new headache, worsening of migraine headache, sleep disorders, imbalance, a sense of dizziness, tinnitus, and the loss of high-level cognitive abilities in the memory and executive function domain.”

The Weaponization of Cognition

Traditional warfare maims and destroys bodies. Cyberwarfare corrupts systems. Cognitive warfare assaults the organ through which we perceive and think. According to a NATO Science and Technology Organization’s report, Mitigating and Responding to Cognitive Warfare, the goal of cognitive warfare is

“…to exploit facets of cognition to disrupt, undermine, influence, or modify human decision making and behavior.”

It differs fundamentally from cyber or information warfare. As François du Cluzel clarifies in his NATO paper, Cognitive Warfare, the Battle for the Brain, cognitive warfare;

“does not focus strictly on the field of 'information' but on that of 'cognition', i.e. what the brain does with information.”

Cognitive warfare erases the neat demarcations of conflict, its campaigns waged both in the open and in the unseen, in declared hostilities and during the veneer of peace. Its target is not territory, but the very architecture of thought, exploiting the fissures in our cognitive landscapes to disrupt, undermine, and ultimately remold the capacity for decision.

Amplified by the silent leverage of modern technology, AI, neuro-technology, the ubiquitous digital commons of social media, these incursions into the mind become chillingly efficient, demanding fewer resources and incurring less overt risk for the aggressor. According to the senate committee:

“Pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radiofrequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics of reported AHIs, although information gaps exist.”

Through novel modi operandi, born from the weaponized insights of behavioral science and neuroscience, adversaries deploy cognitive effects designed to shatter situational awareness and our ability to make sense of the world. Their influence thus seeps into the conscious and subconscious strata of both individual minds and the collective psyche, penetrating and permeating the foundations of understanding.

Du Cluzel distills this further: it is a war not on what people think, but how they think. It feeds on perceptional vulnerabilities, exploits biases, induces attentional saturation, and strategically implants doubt. Its aim is not persuasion, but disorientation. The adversary does not seek to win an argument, they seek to scramble the capacity to process it.

Havana as a Prototype

The National Academies report documented the symptoms with clinical rigor: sudden onset vertigo, spatial disorientation, high-pitched sound with directional qualities, and lasting cognitive impairment. Many victims described symptoms localized to specific rooms, disappearing upon exit, returning upon reentry. These were not psychosomatic manifestations. They suggested deliberate targeting.

The NAS report further notes that

“…the mere consideration of such a scenario raises grave concerns about a world with disinhibited malevolent actors and new tools for causing harm.”

The symptoms align with the effects of neuroweapons, defined by Armin Krishnan in his book Military Neuroscience and the Coming Age of Neurowarfare as:

“Weapons that specifically target the brain or the central nervous system in order to affect the targeted person's mental state, mental capacity and ultimately the person's behavior in a specific and predictable way.”

These techniques fall into four categories: drugs, bugs, waves, and bytes. Havana Syndrome is strongly suggestive of the “waves” category, directed energy attacks.

Cognitive Dominance

This shift is not hypothetical. It is doctrinal. Armin Krishnan describes China’s pursuit of “cognitive domain operations” as part of its “Three Warfares” strategy. The goal is “mind superiority” through the exploitation of NBIC convergence, Nanotech, Biotech, Infotech, and Cognitive science, as a means to dominate adversaries in the cognitive domain.

Russia’s legacy in this field is longer. From “reflexive control” to “active measures,” Russia has long embraced manipulation of perception as a strategic tool. Their emerging doctrine frames cognition, consciental (conscious) and psychological terrain, as warfighting ground.

The United States, too, has invested heavily. DARPA’s neurotechnology programs, while largely defensive or performance-enhancing in official framing, tacitly acknowledge the battlefield potential of neural interfaces and cognitive disruption.

The Strategic Aim: Eroding Reality

The purpose of cognitive warfare is not to slow decisions, but to distort the conditions under which they are made. NATO outlines how these operations target the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop’s most vulnerable phase: Orientation. Du Cluzel lists mechanisms of orientation disruption as:

“Sensory and perceptive overflow, attentional saturation, tunneling of attention, errors of judgment, cognitive biases.”

The result is paralysis, not of muscles, but of epistemic function. The cognitive battlefield is not a metaphor. It is a feedback system of interpretation, where an adversary can quietly compromise action by first fracturing understanding.

Epistemic Fracture as Strategic Goal

The NAS report warned that early investigation of the Havana cases was hampered by a “lack of early, systematic data collection.” This is no minor detail. The opacity of evidence is the operational feature. Attribution becomes a casualty of the design. One thing is certain we are building a “Digital Iron Curtain.” As Committee on Intelligence CIA Subcommittee Chairman Rick Crawford said:

“There is reliable evidence to suggest that some Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs) or Havana Syndrome are the work of foreign adversaries.”

These attacks occur in the “gray zone,” below the threshold of open military conflict, yet potent enough to “strategically degrade” by creating ambiguity. If victims cannot prove harm, if governments cannot confidently identify a culprit, the cost of retaliation becomes prohibitively high. Paralysis ensues.

And therein lies the payload: fear and doubt.

The Ethical and Legal Quagmire

Few national laws or international agreements restrict neuroweapons. There is no Geneva Protocol for the neural latticework of human cognition. The absence of legal norms is concerning and we should consider adding a clause to the Geneva Protocol for frameworks tailored to “attacks on the human brain.”

NATO have in fact called for the development of ethical-legal architectures to govern these emergent domains. But at present, the cognitive battlefield is unregulated. The result: open societies, dependent on truth, consent, and coherence, are more vulnerable to cognitive warfare than autocracies, which can mask both origin and intent.

The Real Weapon Is Doubt

Havana Syndrome is not an anomaly. It is a signal. Because of what it revealed about the fragility of our cognitive commons. We are entering an era where war may begin not with drones or invasions, but with dizziness, confusion, and ‘the loss of high-level cognitive abilities in the memory and executive function domain.’

As Clausewitz once defined war as the continuation of politics by other means, cognitive warfare recasts politics, making perception its terrain and lucidity its price. Sun Tzu’s goal was to “subdue the enemy without fighting”. If the ultimate goal of war is to force your enemy to act against their own interest, then cognitive warfare achieves that before a single shot is fired.

The next frontier of defense will not be one of walls or firewalls, but of minds, resilient not merely in knowledge, but in the capacity to think and know.

Lucidity, cognitive integrity, must be defended as we once defended borders.

Stay curious

Colin

Image: policy paper cover, written by: Irene Pujol Chica & Quynh Dinh Da Xuan