alt Hacker News> It is designed to heat up the first ~0.5mm of your skin.
Oh, is that all?
> US officials had also considered deploying the system during moments of domestic unrest, including at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term when protests erupted over the murder of George Floyd, according to a former US official familiar with those discussions.
This is for "the border" (because you know we should be able to torture people there), but really this will imperial boomerang back to US citizens in the blink of an eye.
The real question is why you would give a new weapon to the rioters, of course. Much of that "domestic unrest" was caused by police escalating situations (aka police riots), to both punish people for speaking out and also to use the spectacle of disorder to show how we need them.