Why wouldn’t this create news coverage? Regardless of its factual merits, it almost reads like a plot from a spy thriller, of course people are gonna read articles discussing it. I’d be far more surprised if the opposite was true.

Because we have 24 hour news cycles that are heavily dependent on providing entertainment masquerading as news to generate revenue. And this has all the makings of a cliched spy novel. Super secret weapons, forces covertly attacking each other to no apparent ends, and a good deal of conspiracy and paranoia all around.

Because it's super interesting? I never heard of this Frey Effect before, nor about the military's "active denial system".

The Frey guy even supports the theory that the Russians are coming here, infecting our bodily fluids.

The active denial system was sold as a better water cannon to disperse protests, since it burns the skin over T-Shirts.

Easy it’s casus belli to create (likely already exist) and use similar weapons.

The fact that such alleged attacks are reported both in Cuba and in China, which nations have very little history of technical collaboration, makes it more likely that the alleged weapon was actually used by elements of USA bureaucracy. USA diplomats are the common thread here, no matter what purpose is assumed. It will certainly not be the first case of those serving the military-industrial complex being directly victimized by same.

If Russia had just wanted to play with their new toy while victimizing people with no local sympathy, they could have hit e.g. guest workers in Dubai and Western expats in Thailand. Actually they have lots of isolated communities in Siberia they could have observed more easily while staying out of the news completely.

Even if the "what", "where", and "when" ends up conforming to current "journalistic" speculation in these cases, the "how", "why", and "who" will probably never be really known. It's fine to be suspicious when Russian media are blaming USA, because they are "rivals". In the reversed case, why wouldn't one retain that suspicion?

Or, as I said above, it's simple USGov incompetence. Which, sadly, is almost always correct.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/finally-a-l...

That's an interesting article, but in fairness it's at least as general as TFA. Yes that is one plausible explanation, but verifiable facts are so hard to come by on this topic, and there are so many powerful interests involved, that we ought to be quite skeptical of everything we see.