Since late 2016, diplomats, first in Havana and then elsewhere, began falling ill with migraines, dizziness, and a host of other symptoms. Credulous journalists quickly bought the idea that it was an enemy attack. After all, it originated in Cuba!

Julia Ioffe — first for GQ, then for Puck — hyped the “terrifying directed-energy attacks on diplomats and spies” throughout 2021. The Washington Post editorial board intoned the same year, “The source of the ‘Havana syndrome’ must be found. National security demands it.” A year later, the Post editorial board was still insisting that “it is too soon to stop investigating.”

Journalists and commentators who were skeptical of the idea that the sickness was the work of a foreign state — or any attacker — were red-baited. The day the intelligence agencies’ report was released, Adam Gaffney, a doctor and a Havana syndrome skeptic, noted on Twitter that, when he was interviewed on this topic for a Vice podcast, a New Yorker reporter asked whether he was “in cahoots with the Cuban government.”