I’ll add on this as well with an additional idea

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills with this stuff. What’s more probable, a small island nation developing some sort of insane super tech and then just using it to screw with Americans (or letting the Russians screw with them), or

Some of them being gassed by their own embassies as they fumigate for a deadly virus, and others developing psychosomatic symptoms? Even the FBI discounted this being an actual thing, the CIA isn’t even looking at it afaik, and god knows how they love to fuck around.