There was a minor bit of good news in the midst of a chaotic world this week. We can finally stop pretending “Havana syndrome” is real, because US intelligence has just more or less admitted it isn’t.

After a yearslong review of the “anomalous health incidents” suffered by spies and diplomats in Cuba from 2016 on, the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) revealed this week that no, the mysterious ailments almost certainly weren’t the work of some nefarious foreign power blasting microwave beams, supervillain-like, at the Americans working in embassies and other US government offices around the world. While the agencies acknowledge “that US personnel sincerely and honestly reported their experiences, including those that were painful or traumatic,” they concluded that the microwave-weapon theory that prevailed in the Washington establishment was “not borne out by subsequent medical and technical analysis,” and that they “identified medical, environmental, and social factors that plausibly can explain” the symptoms.

In other words, what “Havana syndrome” sufferers experienced was very real, but only in the sense that a placebo is also real medicine. And there’s a good chance that the arcane energy weapon they imagined as the cause of their suffering really was just the literal sound of crickets.