‚The innocuous microwave on a shelf in a laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash., is anything but ordinary.

“Weird,” is how Penny McKenzie, a cybersecurity engineer at the laboratory, describes the device.

The microwave arrived at PNNL with the capability to be controlled through a smart speaker connected to the internet, a connection McKenzie and her colleagues declined when they plugged it into the wall.