Was the derecho that brought damaging winds over a wide area of Iowa and Illinois last month caused by extraterrestrial technology akin to what they use for tornadoes?

This you saw intuitively to be true. It is akin to selecting different output parameters to defocus the energy in a way to spread it over a larger landmass to get winds going, but high winds with directionality, to be sustained, and it is that property of having abnormally high velocity over a sustained period of time to cause cumulative damage that is the hallmark of this presumed natural disaster. It is not natural to have such severe windstorms, so whenever this happens you can be sure there is an extraterrestrial origin. This simply adds additional variety and allows more havoc to be created without undue suspicion in having it due to one type of weather alone. As you know, weather-related disasters happen year-round, all of which are caused by extraterrestrial manipulation of nature.