RF power meters have proven to be a surprisingly useful and inexpensive tool to identify inappropriate network activity of _many_ varieties on compromised hosts once baselined. Two pictured are a couple of my favorite ones. Recommended for your toolkit.
In general though the approach is sound, IMHO, dunno about their project specifics. I’ve only been playing with these RF monitoring tools a short time, and easily recognize a wealth of useful information and signatures there. It begs for more sophisticated defensive analysis.
I was joking about DARPA, but the end goal for this tech will be a separate but onboard meter that provides the same functionality without needing an external meter, allowing devices to self-detect compromise.