I think that you are too harsh. I don't know their other papers but the fact that they demonstrate such a cheap way to break the airgap has real world implications. You don't have to be an international spy agency with custom hardware listening to side channel noise, anybody with a WiFi card and the right know how can do it. This is significant, killing the WiFi card on your device is not enough to deter exfiltration even by the least sophisticated attackers.
Yes, the attack is unidirectional, but that is not without value. Time and time again, the airgap has been breached from the outside, from stuxnet to various cryptocurrency heists. Security is about layers and there are many applications where the gap must me breached bidirectionally - this is an example of breaching one of those layers, indeed, the weaker inside-to-outside layer. You might also intentionally run untrusted code on an airgap, that could report back information about the environment or tests you perform on it.
So, yes, predictable and not a danger by itself, but not without value and possibly a key component of an elaborated real world attack.
Yes, the attack is unidirectional, but that is not without value. Time and time again, the airgap has been breached from the outside, from stuxnet to various cryptocurrency heists. Security is about layers and there are many applications where the gap must me breached bidirectionally - this is an example of breaching one of those layers, indeed, the weaker inside-to-outside layer. You might also intentionally run untrusted code on an airgap, that could report back information about the environment or tests you perform on it.
So, yes, predictable and not a danger by itself, but not without value and possibly a key component of an elaborated real world attack.