The Havana Syndrome, Venezuela and the Discombobulator

 "Phasers On Stun"
William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, 1966 or 2265

Over the past two weeks, I noticed three news stories that seemed connected, although they were presented separately by the news media. 

1) In an exclusive story, CNN reported that during the final days of the Biden administration, the Homeland Security Investigations agency purchased a working “Havana Syndrome” device from an undisclosed seller for more than ten million dollars.  The device was said to be a pulsed electromagnetic weapon.  The report said that the device was small enough to fit inside of a backpack, and contained Russian components, although it was not Russian in origin.

2) During the Trump administration’s Venezuela raid and abduction of Nicolas Maduro, a Venezuelan soldier reported experiencing sudden, debilitating symptoms during the attack without an apparent cause.  The soldier’s account indicated that hundreds of Venezuelan soldiers had been affected, including the 20 soldiers tasked with protecting Maduro.  Reported symptoms included concussion-like head pain, mass paralysis, bleeding from the nose and vomiting blood.  The Venezuelan soldier believed that US forces had used a sonic energy weapon. 

3) In an interview following the Venezuelan raid, President Trump bragged about using a new, secret weapon.  Trump said, “They won’t let me talk about it”, but he talked about it nonetheless.  Trump called it “The Discombobulator”, and said it prevented the Venezuelan military from mounting a significant defense during the raid.  One interpretation of the president’s rambling statement would be that the US weapon prevented equipment from functioning, but the term “Discombobulator” suggests that it is an anti-personnel weapon. 

Havana Syndrome
The Havana Syndrome is a collection of milder symptoms than reported in the Venezuelan raid. Incidents were reported in over a dozen international locations from 2016 to the present, centering on embassies and nearby hotels.  Victims were generally U.S. and Canadian diplomats and their families, although White House employees also reported similar symptoms.  In all, over 1000 people in a dozen international locations reported experiencing dizziness, balance problems, head pain, cognitive problems and insomnia, often (but not always) accompanied by a loud buzzing sound.  Symptoms sometimes persisted for months.  The reality of the syndrome was widely debated, and U.S. intelligence services published a report in 2023 discrediting the idea that the syndrome resulted from a weapon.

Existing Anti-Personnel Energy Weapons
The U.S. has conducted research and made modest progress in developing anti-personnel energy weapons.  Existing weapons include an electromagnetic weapon which produces heating and skin pain, and a low-frequency sonic weapon of dubious effectiveness.  The reported symptoms would be a step-change in the effectiveness of an energy weapon, putting it into the class of a Star Trek phaser on the stun setting. 

Reliability of Reporting
Both the report from Venezuela and the CNN report on the device acquisition are single-source reports, though they have been widely disseminated.  There is a possibility that the entire story is disinformation.  But the effectiveness of the Venezuelan raid cannot be denied, and the president’s braggadocio seems characteristic of a real thing.

Implications
The idea that the U.S. possesses a broad-beam anti-personnel energy weapon that can potentially strike targets inside buildings has profound implications. Depending on range, such a weapon would be decisive in a trench-warfare situation such as the war in Ukraine; it would allow U.S. forces to conduct leadership abductions in almost any country; it would allow terrorists to access almost any site with normal security, including banks, museums, gold repositories, military installations, and conventional or nuclear power sites.  Such a weapon would give authorities the absolute ability to quell popular uprisings through crowd control. 

Government employees whose claims of harm from the Havana syndrome are now pressing for their claims to be reconsidered. 

If there is any credibility to these reports, I suspect every military in the world is abruptly pouring millions into new research, and every intelligence agency in the world is scouring the world to buy another device.  I’m sure that it would be possible to create shielding for an electromagnetic weapon, but researchers must first know how the device works.  And deploying shielding widely might prove impractical.

Another piece of the science fiction future may have arrived.
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The image of Captain Kirk with a phaser was generated by AI without permission and not for profit.  
The image will be removed upon request. 
References
Device Acquisition
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/13/politics/havana-syndrome-device-pentagon-hsi
https://futurism.com/robots-and-machines/havana-syndrome-device-government

Venezuelan Impact
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2026/01/13/epic-win-us-secret-weapon-may-have-incapacitated-maduros-guards/
https://www-wionews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.wionews.com/world/-bleeding-noses-blood-vomiting-mass-paralysis-did-us-deploy-sonic-weapons-in-venezuela-operation-to-extract-maduro-havana-syndrome-lawyer-says-1768296794658/amp

White House Reporting
https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/thehill.com/policy/defense/5706502-trump-discombobulator-weapon-venezuela/amp/