given the cheapness and compactness of modern electronics any furniture can carry a factory (or during shipping) installed chip these days, even without getting into smart/cloud connected office tables and chairs territory. One can hope at least NSA X-rays their furniture :)

Even better if you integrate into something like a motorized standing desk, they'll plug it in for you.

Does that USB drive stick trick still work?

Yes, yes, it does

I very much doubt you could discover anything with X-rays. You can place whole device inside a screw or the circuit can be very thin with little to no metal etc.

I would assume it's becoming a a software war. You monitor all frequencies with SDR and try to shield as much as possible while on the offending side you try to push information on different frequencies and making it look a like like stuff that's already in the air.

You also don't even need to use RF. You can also use high-frequency audio to communicate to other devices, though I guess I'm not sure how you get it out of the building.

It has been said that covert agencies have monitored conversations through windows by measuring the acoustic vibrations with a laser. So maybe that will work, but I have no idea how well that works with higher frequencies outside of human perception.

Higher frequencies will get filtered out. They don't have the power to vibrate the glass unless it's very loud.

Cuban sounds as an [ultrasound intermodular distortion based] attack on electronics with humans seeming to be a side effect:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductor...

So sounds like you'd also want a room that can give off emp pulses to fry electronics that you can't see as a failsafe

Also discourages workers from bringing their phones into the office. Or their pacemakers.

I read somewhere years ago that they do. I don't remember where though, sorry.

Unrelated: WTF? I just had to do a reCAPTCHA on HN to log in!