Kevin Fu and team at UMich's security & privacy group provided the most plausible explanation for what's going on here. https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/how-we-reve...
It's still an extremely poor explanation.
If they're leaving out explicit (or even the vaguest) details, it probably means that's the only thing keeping this out of the hands of weirdos.
Also, other layers of secrecy are likely in play. It's probably already known that such weapons do exactly these things, but how would people even know, without published research? Top secret military experiments? Private research performed by military contractors? (in other words, takes one to know one)
I'll conveniently ignore the O2 assist for the sake of counterpoint. :)