In other news, Canada has formally designated the Proud Boys as an international terrorist organization.
OTTAWA — Canada formally designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist entity under its criminal law on Wednesday, a move that could lead to financial seizures and allow police to treat any crimes they commit as terrorist activity.
Government officials said Wednesday that they believe Canada is the first nation to label the Proud Boys a terrorist group. The events last month in Washington, they added, contributed to the move, which was already under consideration.
Meanwhile, federal investigators looking at Russia's big hack that originated at SolarWinds reportedly found that Chinese hackers were using the same exploit as the Russians to spy on U.S. government computers. There's failing, and then there's this.
Finally, the Pentagon is soliciting proposals for a wearable device for detecting incoming microwaves. This is reportedly connected to something we first covered here in 2017; the mysterious "sonic attacks" that weren't actually sonic at all.
That was laid out in a Dec. 9 contract solicitation for “a low cost, low weight, small size wearable radio frequency (RF) weapon exposure detector,” specifying high-frequency microwaves, that came from the Defense Department’s Defense Health Program. [...]
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s criticized report suggested the weapons were the “most plausible” explanation for puzzling neurological injuries seen in at least 15 diplomatic personnel and their families in Cuba in 2016 and 2017.
“Without known patterns of [radiofrequency] injury to guide diagnosis, it will be difficult to differentiate [microwave] injury from other common sources of illness and injury such as heat stroke,” says the defense agency’s microwave weapon detector program request, which closes in about two weeks.
When I read this report from Buzzfeed, I looked back at the infamous attacks in 2017 in a different way. I had always viewed those attacks as diplomatic harassment intended to disrupt relations because the U.S. and Cuba -- and it may have been that -- but what if it was also a weapons test? Even if it wasn't an explicit weapons test, the Pentagon apparently noticed.
Forgive the light posting today. There was a whole lot of nothing going on and I think there's just going some days like that under the Biden administration.