THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2026 17 What National Defense Leaves Out 50 Years Ago When “national defense” is promoted by presidents, congressmen, and media, it is invariably conceptualized in terms of military and economic, never in terms of diplomatic, resources. A strong “national defense posture” means a strong military, not a strong diplomatic establishment. Funds generously bestowed upon the military and intelligence agencies enable them to work with whole banks of computers while the State Department limps along with a handful and is not even certain as to how these can contribute to “diplomacy.” —Foreign Service Officer Smith Simpson in “Diplomacy: Some Professional and Political Perspectives” in the August 1976 edition of the FSJ. Quiet War,” a public program on anomalous health incidents (AHIs). Moderated by retired CIA officer and Hayden Center Senior Fellow John Sipher, the panel featured investigative journalists Christo Grozev and Michael Weiss of “The Insider,” whose recent collaboration with “60 Minutes” has helped reshape public understanding of these attacks, and Mark Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA operations officer injured by an AHI in Moscow in 2017. Grozev and Weiss presented evidence correlating the travel of Russian operatives with the timing and locations of cornerstone AHI cases in Frankfurt, Havana, Tbilisi, Vienna, and elsewhere. The panel also discussed reporting that a miniaturized pulsed-microwave device is now in U.S. government possession and undergoing testing. Polymeropoulos described being denied medical care for years after his injury, and panelists pointed to a yearslong pattern of institutional skepticism inside the U.S. government that treated victims’ accounts as unreliable even as the underlying evidence mounted. Panelists noted that Foreign Service employees and their family members are among those affected, and that the State Department too often deferred to the intelligence community rather than taking responsibility for its own personnel. The full recording, well worth watching, is available at https://bit.ly/ AHI-panel. AFSA is a named plaintiff in active litigation on behalf of Foreign Service members harmed by AHIs and continues to press department and other agency leadership to act without further delay. The association is committed to ensuring affected members have clear, unobstructed access to medical care, without bureaucratic delay, without skepticism, and without having to prove themselves before receiving the attention they deserve. AFSA will continue to advocate on behalf of AHI victims and their families until their needs are met. Members of the Foreign Service community experiencing difficulty in accessing AHI-related care or navigating the claims process can reach AFSA at member@afsa.org. n This issue of Talking Points was compiled by Mark Parkhomenko.
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